


Sgàile Leannan

by lokilickedme



Series: The McClary Chronicles [1]
Category: Scottish Mythology, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst and Feels, Autism Spectrum, Awkward Sexual Situations, But he's still a dick, Complete, Dubious Consent, Emotionally Repressed, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Goodbye Sex, King is trying, Masturbation, Molly wants a kiss, Panty Kink, Part 1 of the series, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Tension, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Spooning, Switching, Understanding, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Woman on Top, aggressive sex, neurodivergent character, reluctant romance, star-crossed lovers, stranded in a blizzard, sullen King, talkative Molly, window peeking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-08-18 20:21:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 58,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8174816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokilickedme/pseuds/lokilickedme
Summary: Part 1 of The McClary ChroniclesStuck in Scotland doing soil-testing research, Molly finds herself completely out of her element and in the crosshairs of a rough local who doesn't turn a welcoming eye to strangers.  Caught in a dangerous storm in an unfamiliar place, her only option beside freezing to death or getting lost on the mountain is to follow him home...King McClary is a difficult sort of man - quiet, withdrawn, sullen and surly, living wild and appreciating the company of no one but the sheep he herds across the rough Highland hills.  When the noisy woman from somewhere else shows up on his land, all he wants is to get her gone.  Until a blizzard strands them together in his tiny cabin and nature starts to do its unwelcome thing.Sgàile Leannan translates roughly to "Demon Lover", "Ghost Lover", or any variation thereof...I'm not being terribly nitpicky about absolute translations because Scottish Gaelic to English isn't an exact science.  Just enjoy and have fun ;)





	1. PROLOGUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Fear sam bith a loisgeas a mhàs, ‘s e fhèin a dh’fheumas suidhe air.**  
Whoever burns his backside must himself sit upon it.

 

 

"Oh come on, dammit!!"

The rain was starting to fall in big thudding dollops, completely unlike the rain I was used to - there was nothing relaxing, or soothing, or sleepy to this rain.  It was huge and heavy and seemed intent on killing me as I struggled with my equipment, cursing the foundation yet again for sending me into the field with barely functioning machinery.  Frustrated, I turned my face to the sky, maybe to petition the clouds to have pity on me, or maybe just to show God - whichever god reigned over Scotland - my tears.

Whichever it was, it was a stupid move, because a massive raindrop hit me in the eyeball and nearly blinded me.

_"Fuck!"_

"What sort of fool stares into a stormcloud?"

The voice came from nowhere and I spun around clumsily;  I'd been alone, or I'd assumed I had, since I'd left the village that morning.  But as I blinked the stinging cold rainwater from my eyes and looked frantically around me for the source of the words, I realized just how easy it would be for someone to be watching me without my knowledge.  And apparently someone was.

But I couldn't see anyone.

"Somebody out there?"

No reply.

"Come on, really?  You're just going to freak me out and then let me think I imagined the whole thing?"

There was a small but upsetting crash from behind me as the rapidly muddying ground gave way around my equipment and it fell over, disassembling itself in a pile of parts that began immediately sinking into the morass.  I threw my hands up in surrender.

"Okay.  You win.  Scotland wins.  You've made it abundantly clear that I don't belong here since the moment I set foot in this country.  Go ahead, swallow my gear, I don't give a shi - "

My words were lost when I tried to stomp back to my truck and found my boots stuck in the mud.  One foot came completely out and I pitched forward, barely avoiding a faceplant as I landed with a horrifically ungraceful splat on my hands and knees.  There was a sinister chuckle from the trees as I struggled to regain my footing, tugging at the boot that was still standing up on its own.

_The damn woods are laughing at me_ was all I could think.  But that was foolish, obviously, and as I peered through the ridiculously heavy downpour toward the source of the sound I realized I was about a thousand miles from town and even further from civilization, alone, stupidly outgunned by the weather and my own lack of knowledge of the area and absolute unpreparedness for its attempts at killing me.

In short, I hadn't counted on Scotland.

But apparently Scotland had counted on me, because somewhere through that pelting wall of rock-hard raindrops was a voice that was now whistling.

Everything in me shouted _follow it._ _Even if it's one of those highland ghosts, it's bound to have a house to haunt._

And so, despite everything I'd ever been taught in my Philadephia upbringing about never _ever_ following a stranger into a strange place, I yanked my boot out of the deepening muck and tugged it back onto my foot, hopping along until it was somewhat on properly, hobbling toward the trees in pursuit of whatever it was that found my predicament so amusing.

 

I was about three feet past the outer layer of thick trees when I heard what sounded like a llama spitting and spun around, stumbling back in panicked surprise when I saw someone was standing next to one of the trees.  I couldn't see them very well through the heavy rain, but whoever it was, they were very _very_ tall, very _very_ dark haired, and very _very_ much probably a ghost as suspected.  But they seemed humanoid, so I scrubbed the rain out of my eyes and tried to focus on the situation and not on the likelihood that this would be the last conversation I would ever have.

"Was that you?" I asked, shaking my head as soon as I heard the stupid question come out of my mouth, waving my hand at him to let him know I didn't intend for him to answer.  "Of course it was.  Can you help me get someplace to wait out this storm?  I don't know my way around and - "

He raised his head and stared at me, and in that moment my breath caught in my throat and choked off my rambling.  I think my mouth must have been moving in some dumb mockery of attempted speech, but when he spit again, all I could do was grimace and take a step back.

"Can...could you...please?  I wasn't expecting it to rain like this and I'm pretty sure my truck has sunk by now...visibility is next to zero, there's no way I could get myself off this mountain."

He stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head like he was disgusted and turned to walk away.  I didn't know what else to do, so I pulled at my boots where the mud had sucked me down a good six inches and followed him, slogging along clumsily in the bog and wondering how he wasn't freezing to death in that kilt.

 

 

_To be continued..._

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Chan ann leis a’chiad bhuille thuiteas a’chraobh.**  
It is not with the first stroke that the tree falls.

 

 

He didn't say a word as we slogged along, or rather as _I_ slogged along, slipping and stumbling and in general looking, I'm sure, like a giraffe on ice skates.  It was very much like a scene from one of the Lord of the Rings movies, where the elf is walking gracefully on top of the snow, unaffected and serenely unbothered, while everyone else is eyebrow deep and sucking it into their lungs, huffing along clumsily and praying for death to take them.  I kept sinking in the mud, falling on my face, basically being one of the cranky dwarves while he trotted along being the ethereal elf.  It was frustrating trying to keep up, and I finally met and made peace with the end of my rope.  Going to my knees in fatigue and defeat, I yelled for him to stop.

He glanced back at me, his face a deep scowl that I could barely see in the dark overcast of the storm.  He shook his head in an annoyed kind of disgust and kept going, and it was then that I realized he wasn't actually taking me anywhere.  I was just following him.

"Please!  Stop!"

I could hear it in my own voice - I was crying, my nose was running, I was covered in mud and muck and whatever the sheep who wandered around free up here had left behind, and I was getting damn near close to desperate for some assistance.  But he wasn't the slightest bit interested in either helping me or waiting for me, and as I stood there with my pitiful sobs being drowned out by the noise of the storm, my boots filled to the top with watery mud.  As final straws go, it was pretty final.

_"PLEASE!!"_

He finally stopped and turned around, and I got my first full-on look at his face.  There wasn't a single ray of sunlight to go by, but in the dim cloudy leftover light of day I could sort of make out his features.  The look on his face was fierce and unfriendly, but dear god, there was a very good chance that under the rain and mud and wet hair this man was handsome as hell.  Even in my currently non-romantic frame of mind, I could see and admit to that as fact.

"If you're coming, you come on your own."

Handsome as hell and mean as fuck.  He turned and took off again, leaving me to stumble along trying to empty my boots and at least keep him within eyeshot.  I'd heard stories about people getting lost in the hills and never being found.

Probably because of this guy.

"Wait - wait, I'm coming."  My boots were making rude slurping noises as I tugged them out of the mud and I would have laughed if I'd been anywhere near a good mood or the situation had been any less dire.  But my guide and current ticket out of hell was trotting along at a pace I couldn't keep up with, and giggling through frustrated tears at farting noises was only going to slow me down more.  I had no doubt he would leave me to die on my own if I fell too far behind, and this wasn't a sky I wanted to spend the night under.

Or freeze to death under, for that matter.

 

 

I'd lost sight of him for a few minutes and was panicking, stomping around in circles as I tried to figure out which way to go, when I heard a whistle and nearly fainted with relief.  Following the direction it had come from, I topped a hill and spotted him;  he was on his knees doing something to a sheep, and I scrubbed at the rain in my eyes to be sure it was something I actually wanted to witness.  He looked up at me, scowl still firmly in place as he started to push the fat animal upright.

"People die out here you know.  Usually the stupid ones from somewhere else."

I had to stop and think for a minute, letting my brain translate his heavy accent into words that meant something, and once I'd made it to _stupid_ I felt myself giving him an offended glare - but he wasn't looking at me anymore and the look was wasted.  He hefted the sheep up onto its feet and gave it a pat, sending it on its way as he wiped his muddy hands on his kilt.  I didn't know what I was supposed to do, so I just stood there wondering why I was so intrigued with the way his thick socks bunched up around the tops of his boots.  This was the closest I'd been to him and I noticed with a blank sort of interest that there were tattoos down the side of his leg.

I jumped when he spoke again - not sure why, because his voice wasn't the least bit loud - or maybe it was, and the heavy rainfall and constant rumbling thunder was just drowning it out.  But what it lacked in volume was more than covered by the authoritative tone that seemed to come naturally to him, and it definitely called me to attention despite the sounds of the storm still relentlessly kicking up around us.

"You can come if you want."

He stood to full height and I was shocked again at how tall he was, how he sort of _unfurled_ himself from crouching to standing.  But he was already stalking off toward the little house that I hadn't noticed in the distance until just that moment, and the rain, at even more of a pelting downpour now if that was possible, was stinging everywhere it hit me.

So I did the only thing I could do.  I scurried off after him as quick as I could.  There wasn't really much else I _could_ do - I had no way of getting off the mountain, and sleeping in my truck out in the field - even if I could actually find my way back to it - wasn't an option with the cold creeping in as frighteningly fast as it was.  The chill was bone-rattling and I had no doubt he wasn't making that stuff up about people dying out here.

"Yeah.  House.  Okay yes, I want.  Wait, okay?"  I bent over to fix my boot that had been sucked off my foot by the thick mud again, but by the time I looked up, he was halfway there...and definitely not waiting.

 

 

By the time we got to the cabin the wind had kicked up and a bitter icy chill had set my teeth to rattling, but he was still acting as if he was immune to it all.  He was wearing nothing but a thick sweater, a worn out leather jacket, and his kilt and boots...and I had it on good authority from the wind that he wasn't wearing anything underneath.  I wanted to ask him how he wasn't even shivering, but he slammed the cabin door while I was still a dozen yards away and I had to run to get there quickly, afraid he would lock me out if I took too long.  There was a barn nearby but I had no interest in trying to survive the night with whatever lived in it.

Knocking with frozen knuckles that felt like they were going to shatter after the second knock, I waited and waited till finally he opened the door and stood there glaring at me, his big body completely filling up the doorway.  He was so tall he had to duck his head to peer out from under the top of the doorframe.

I gave him a pleading look and asked if I could come in.

He turned and walked off, leaving the door to drift shut in my face as I scrambled to get inside.  Night had fallen so suddenly that it was almost like blinking and finding it dark before you open your eyes again - I'd never seen it get dark so fast in my life and the night was bringing all kinds of scary noises with it, at least what I could hear over the howling wind and rumbling thunder.  I ducked inside quickly and shut the door, stomping in place to bring some feeling back to my soggy feet.  They made squishing sounds inside my boots and I saw him roll his eyes as he turned away.

It was dark inside the cabin, just the flickery orangish glow of a small fire in a stone hearth casting a decidedly Hagrid's hovel effect on the small room.  I glanced around, not sure where I was supposed to go.  There was a chair by the fireplace, but he was crouching in front of it to stoke the fire, so I wasn't about to go near it.  The only other option was a tiny bed against the far wall.

I _definitely_ wasn't going near that.

And so I stood, awkwardly watching and trying to pretend like I wasn't watching, as he stripped off his sweater and laid it over the back of the chair.

"You'll be sick by morning if you stay in your wet clothes," he said in a matter of fact tone that didn't hold even the slightest bit of suggestiveness.  He motioned toward what appeared to be a kitchen area.  "Make yourself some tea if you want, it'll warm you.  You can sleep there, I'll take you down off the mountain in the morning."

"Wait - what?  Sleep _here?"_

He ignored me, moving around the little room gathering things as if I wasn't there, and I looked around to see where he meant for me to bunk down...he'd pointed somewhere in the general vicinity of the area in front of the fireplace, but there was nothing there but floor.

"I don't understand what you - "

When I turned around to get some clarification I saw him sitting on the edge of the bed tugging his boots off, dropping them noisily before standing to strip out of his kilt.  I turned back around quickly, choking on a gasp, making a horrible sort of gagging noise as I accidentally sucked spit down my windpipe.  The man had no shame and no modesty and I closed my eyes, knowing once I heard the kilt hit the floor that he was completely naked behind me.  Without a word he strode over to the little kitchen area with just a towel tossed over his shoulder and set a big bowl on the table, heading for the door.

"Wait," I said, still sputtering a little as he was about to pull the door shut behind him...he stopped and looked at me, his expression slightly annoyed as he watched me starting to panic, my eyes going to the ceiling above his head to avoid looking at his very naked self.  "What am I supposed to do?"

"You might want to clean up," he said curtly, nodding at the bowl on the table.  "I've a shower outside but it's too cold for you.  You wash up in here."  There was a blast of icy air that ripped through the cabin as he tugged the door shut, and I could hear him say in a distinctly annoyed tone from the other side, _"Or not, suit yourself."_

 

 

I stood where I was, completely at a loss for what to do, trying not to think about what I'd just seen.  He was, for lack of more adequate phraseology, pretty much a perfect specimen of rough mountain-man maleness and I felt my hands shaking as I gnawed nervously on my thumb.  Something about the way he'd strolled right past me without the least bit of self consciousness, stone cold naked with just that towel over his shoulder, made my stomach feel queasy and warm.  There was a strong sense of _solidness_ to him, and though I'd tried my best to keep my eyes anywhere but on him, it had been damn near impossible not to get a good eyeful as he walked past me.  Long strongly muscled torso, lean hips, broad shoulders, long strong legs with powerful looking thighs...long black hair...tattoos, lots of them...I'd caught a glimpse below before sending my eyes upward and dear god, the man must have had to have the tailor put an extra pleat in his kilt to accommodate what was hanging heavily between his legs, just beneath the dark patch of hair that ran from a gradually spreading trail that started at his bellybutton.  He was uncut, which was something I was completely unfamiliar with.

I realized with no small flush of hot-cheeked shame that I'd looked _far_ more than I'd intended.

He had put a bowl on the table and I stared at it, trying to pull my mind off the mental image of thick male thighs as I figured out what I was supposed to do with it - did he mean for me to use it to wash up?  There was a sink in the kitchen with a faucet, why couldn't I just use that?  I didn't see anything that looked like a bathroom and realized that one of the little buildings I'd seen in the dim light outside must be an outhouse.  I needed to pee, but not bad enough to consent to that much of a lowering of my personal standards.

"Damn heathen," I muttered, glancing around, head suddenly clearing as my situation slowly crept in.  The cabin was neat and tidy at least, and seemed to have pretty much everything a person would need to live...in the 1800's.  The last time I'd seen a place like this was during frontier days at the theme park when I'd taken my nephews to see how the pioneers lived.  "How does he - ?  What the - ?  Why would - ?  Oh my god."  I couldn't finish a sentence, all I could do was stand there looking around the dimly lit room, wondering how I was going to do this.  I couldn't get off the mountain, going back to my truck was out of the question.  This little hovel was the only house out here so far as I could tell.  I was just going to have to suck it up and survive till morning, with that mean natured man in the room with me.

But I was soaked, muddy, filthy, freezing, and decidedly out of sorts, with just a bowl, no wash cloth, no towel, and no dry clothes to put on.  And no private place in which to attend to any of my personal needs.

It wasn't my best day ever.

As I was looking around in a sort of doomed resignation I noticed with shock that there were books everywhere.  Not just in the little bookshelf by the bed, but stacked on pretty much every available surface, including the floor.  Old books mostly, by the looks of the worn covers...I suddenly felt insanely curious and was tempted to start poking around, but the threat of him returning at any moment kept me standing there by the table until a burst of _I can do this_ overtook me and I went to the sink, turning the single faucet on.  The water was ice cold, but the bowl on the table was some kind of metal - I remembered from frontier days that all I had to do was put it on the fire somehow to heat it.

But the water stopped after a few seconds, and no matter how I tried and retried the faucet knob, not another drop came out.

"What?  You have _got_ to be kidding me - "

One last sputter and a hiss of air came out of the faucet.

I stomped my foot in exasperation - a completely pointless and futile display of aggravation, but it made me feel slightly better about my current reality.  I'd be sleeping muddy tonight on a stranger's cold floor.  It somehow wasn't how I had envisioned my time in Scotland, but something in the back of my mind kept telling me how astronomically worse it could be.

I just couldn't imagine how.

 

 

I was still standing there in front of the traitorous sink when he came back, shooting me a quick glance as he wordlessly headed for the fireplace to warm himself.  The towel was wrapped around his hips this time, but it seemed a sort of unnecessary politeness after he'd strolled out naked right in front of me before.  I watched him as he crouched in front of the fire, his hands held out just inches from the flames, his skin still wet from his shower and mottled red from the cold.  There was something undeniably beautiful about the way his wet hair stuck to his back, jet black against his pale flesh, his muscular shoulders rippling in the dim glow of the fire as he stoked it with an iron poker.

It started becoming difficult to breathe and I had to look away.

"Don't roll into the fire during the night," he grunted, standing and removing the towel from his hips to rub the damp from his hair with it.  His back was to me and I didn't even try to make myself look away this time...his shoulders were broad and thickly muscled, rippling impressively as he dried his hair, and as my unrepentant - if not guilty - stare roamed downward toward his narrow hips, I caught myself absently counting his tattoos.  I had reached seven by the time my eyes fell to the upper curve of his butt.

It was a damn fine backside, I had to begrudgingly admit that to myself.  And as he leaned forward to shake his hair out over the hearth, I could see that heavy cock of his again, just a glimpse, from between his legs.

My face went hot and I finally had to drag my eyes elsewhere.

"Yeah, no...don't roll into the fire...that wouldn't be good."  I groaned inwardly when I heard myself stammering but he didn't seem to either notice or care;  the next sound I heard was the bedsprings creaking as he climbed into the little cot, settling in under the blankets.

He didn't say another word to me.

There was nowhere in the little cabin to go for privacy and I seriously considered just sleeping in my wet clothes, but a deep chill was already setting into my bones and I knew he was right.  If I slept like that I would be sick by morning at worst, miserably uncomfortable all night at best.  I looked around in a renewed sense of panic, wondering how I was going to get around this without looking like a complete idiot.

"Is there a...a blanket or something...that I can use?"

He never opened his eyes, just shifted onto his back and motioned toward a pantry in the kitchen area.  I followed where his finger had pointed and found a thick woolen blanket folded neatly on the top shelf.

"I can't reach it," I said, regretting it instantly when I saw there was a second chair at the little table.  But he didn't respond, so I dragged it to the pantry as quietly as I could and climbed up to get the blanket.  It was heavy and scratchy, but it would be warm at least.

I turned my back to him and stripped down to my underwear as quickly and quietly as I could, wrapping the blanket around myself tightly;  I didn't know if he was looking and I was so cold I was beyond caring. Settling on the floor next to the bed where it felt warmest, I tried to get comfortable, listening to his breathing in the dark, confident in only one thing now as my head finally cleared enough to sanely assess my situation.

Scotland didn't seem to like me very much.

"What's your name?" I whispered, turning my face up toward the bed where I could see his hand hanging over the edge above me, long fingers curled around the corner of the mattress.  He didn't answer, so I tugged my itchy blanket up over my face and scowled at him where I knew he couldn't see me.  "Mine's Molly...not that it matters, I guess."

A heavy silence fell over the room till there was nothing left to hear but the howling of the wind outside and the crackling of the fire inside.  I was just starting to drift into that jerky first stage of half-sleep when I heard the bed springs creak, bringing me back into a drowsy awareness.  He reached down and slipped a finger under the top of my blanket where it had tugged down to my shoulder, and pulled it back up to my neck.

"Night, Molly."

 

 

_To be continued..._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Photo credit to @vivianstark at tumblr for the lovely manip on the far left in my chapter header art


	3. PROLOGUE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of blatant historical inaccuracies in this chapter - just roll with it, like I said this story is for fun and I'm making it up as I go. I'm willing to bet you're not here for textbook research anyway, are you now? ;)

 

 

 

 

 **Ge milis a’ mhil, cò dh’imlicheadh o bhàrr dri i?**  
Honey may be sweet, but no-one licks it off a briar.

 

 

 

"You spent the night in his cabin?!"  Glenda stared at me with wide eyes, swiping at the dribble running down her chin.  She'd choked on her ale the moment I'd said _that guy up on the hill let me sleep on his floor_ and now she was staring at me with a look caught somewhere between fascinated shock and curious panic, as if I'd survived something really impressive that people didn't normally walk away from.  She was the only person I knew enough to chat with in this surreal place, and one of the few that I could actually understand when she spoke, but now her words were slipping back into that heavy brogue that never failed to leave me tilting my head to one side like a dog being whistled at.

"What choice did I have?  It got so dark so fast up there, I had no idea where I was.  He said people die out there."

"Of course they do.  Usually stupid ones from somewhere else."

I shot her a look and took a miserable sip of my own ale.  It was dark and heavy and tasted awful, but there was something soothing about the bitter bite.  She cast a glance toward the door where some people had just come in and scowled as they made a big mess of the entryway floor, shaking the rain and mud off their coats and boots.

"Bloody tourists.   _Take a table, I'll be right with you!"_    She sighed and turned her attention back to me, a questioning curiosity replacing the annoyance in her expression.  "So how did you get down off the hill?"

"He brought his horse up to where my truck was and pulled it out of the mud."  Another sip of ale did nothing to take the lingering chill off me, nor to erase the pervasive feeling of being trapped in some sort of twilight zone episode that was careening weirdly toward a completely whacked out plot twist.  "I dunno what the hell kind of horse that was but - damn.  Thing had muscles like Dwayne Johnson."

"We have some pretty tough animals out here."  She kept staring at me and I knew she was dying to ask, so I finally just blurted it out.

"No, nothing happened, okay?  I slept on the floor, he slept in the bed, it was miserable and cold and he tossed some sort of revolting meat something or other at me this morning to eat as he was leaving and I had to run behind him all the way back down to where my truck was.  He wouldn't even let me ride the horse."

"Work horses aren't generally for riding."

"It had a saddle on it."

"Oh."  She thought about it for a minute, then shrugged.  "He's not known for his manners."

"I'd like to know what he _is_ known for, because the guy is an asshole."

 _"That's_ what he's known for."

I made a face and tried to finish my drink, but it got thicker and more bitter as I got closer to the bottom and I didn't have the stomach for it.  I was still having a difficult time processing the details of the previous night - mostly the mental image that kept dogging my memory, of him naked as the day he was born and having no compunction whatsoever about flashing it in front of me.  He was already up and dressed long before I'd woken that morning, stomping around the cabin and slamming the door hard enough to rattle the windows and make sure I knew it was time for me to get up and get gone, but he had built a nice big fire and the bowl on the table was full of water this time.  It was good and hot and my wet clothes from the night before were laying on the stone hearth, warm and dry.  It was almost enough to convince me he was a decent person somewhere under all that gruff grumpiness.

Until I went outside to thank him and was soundly cursed, good and proper - or at least I felt vaguely certain that was what was happening, as I was having a really tough time understanding him and was pretty sure most of the words he was snarling at me weren't actual words so much as just stuff he was making up as he went along.  Apparently something was up with the sheep and I was interfering with his life in general, and it merited calling me a _caint_ multiple times, whatever that meant.

"Well, I would steer clear of him from now on if I were you," Glenda advised, taking my mug and pouring about half my remaining ale into her own glass.  "Where are you working anyway?"

"On the south ridge, by that creek that goes over the top of the hill."

"Ooh.  Yikes."

"What yikes?"

"Nothing, you're just a lot closer to his place than I thought you were.  Can't you move to the other side of the crest?"

"I can't, it's where the project manager put me, I have to work in that spot."

She stared at me for a minute with a worried grimace.  "He runs the sheep right through there, you know that right?"

"No, yesterday was my first day there and I got a late start.  Why, what's going to happen?"

"You're going to be in his way and he's not going to take kindly to you being there."

"He saw me there yesterday and didn't say anything - "  

She was staring off to a corner booth where a young woman had just settled with two small children, one dark haired and one very blonde, and I stopped talking to look over at them.

"That's the other thing he's known for," she said sarcastically, jerking her head toward them.

"What?"

"See the black haired baby?"

"Yeah?"

"There are a lot of them running around this village - all with light haired mommies and daddies."  The heavy note of suggestion in her voice wasn't lost on me but it did take me a long time to figure out what she was insinuating;  once I caught on, a second glance at the little dark haired child sent a jolt of recognition through me.  The kid _did_ bear a striking resemblance to the man I met on the mountain.

"Oh my god, are you serious?"

Glenda nodded, shooting a nasty look at her waitress as the girl finally came out of the back to take care of the customers.  "My staff, holy god.  Anyway, so you've met our illustrious ruler, you should consider yourself fortunate you didn't waddle out of there with one of his royal offspring poking out your bellybutton."

I ignored the offspring comment and rolled my eyes to hide the fact that my feelings were starting to be just a little bit hurt.  Apparently he liked the ladies...but he sure hadn't liked _me_ much.  "Ruler?"

"Ruler, Majesty, His Royal Highness."

"I don't - I don't know what you mean by that."

"Mister high and mighty up there, he's the last of the Celtic kings, basically."

I stared at her, wordless for several seconds while I made sure we were talking about the same person.   _"That guy??"_

"Yeah, that guy.  Well, I say the last...you'll probably notice a lot of the little black haired bairns running around the village - the longer you're here, the more obvious it'll become.  He seems intent on keeping the bloodline going, for posterity I suppose.  Lord knows the ladies don't mind helping out."

"What, you mean they're all his?"

The look on her face seemed to imply that I wasn't as smart as she'd initially assumed.  She pointed behind me.  "See Carly Gresham over there at the bar?"

"Yeah?"

"Ginger, right?  And her husband is blonde as Thor.  Their second kid has hair black as night and fiery green eyes.  She and Jim both have brown eyes.  Which by itself wouldn't mean an awful lot, I mean you have the mysteries of genetics you're working with here, but...when every third kid in the village has the same exact coloring as the King up there - "  She let her sentence trail off into nothing as she went back to her ale.

I didn't know what to say and my embarrassment at being totally shunned by this apparently wildly promiscuous asshole was starting to get to me.  But I didn't want Glenda to catch on so I fiddled with my mug and stared at the names carved into the table for a while before I spoke again.  "So...he's really got royal blood?"

"Why do you think he's called King?  His real name is Angus or something like that."

"I didn't know he was called that.  I asked his name but he never told me."

"Yeah, he's a friendly bastard."  She stared at me for a minute, almost like I was a celebrity for escaping the King's lair without being impregnated.  I realized I was experiencing a bit of stinging pride that he hadn't even looked at me that way...something in me found the nerve to be a little bit offended by that, at the callous way he'd disregarded my very presence.  I didn't consider myself a vain person by any means, but that sorta stung.  Glenda was still talking and I tuned back in as she was tapping her thumb.  "That ring he wears, the one shaped like a crown - that's all the proof he needs."

I shook my head, chasing out the disappointing knowledge that I'd stared at his naked body like a slab of beef in a steakhouse and he'd never even given me a second glance.  Why was that bothering me so much?  "Proof of what?"

"That he owns all of us, every damn last one."

That made very little sense and I blinked at her, not comprehending much of it except the supposed royalty thing, my eyes constantly straying back over to the corner booth where the little black haired baby was starting to fuss.

"Okay, if he's the last of the whatevers, kings, then why does he live like a squatter up there on someone else's land?"

There was that look again, the one that said _I was under the impression you had some braincells._  "Do you know anything about feudal society?  That's what this place used to be, and on the books it still is.  The Laird or top royalty or whoever was most powerful owned it all, but would lease it out in chunks to the locals to use as farms, ranches, whatever.  They worked the land and paid him from whatever they made off it, and in return they got to call the place theirs and live on it.  It's all his, technically - maybe his name's not on the deeds but everybody knows who he is and this was all property of the crown.  And _he_ is the crown...what's left of it."

"And I suppose that hut he lives in is his castle?"

"Yep.  Overlooking his subjects, up there on the hill looking down on us all like peasants."

A fairly unpleasant memory of the inside of the cabin came back to me and all I could think of was that faucet that hissed air and the big metal bowl that I hadn't really known what to do with.  "I'm not kidding Glenda, that place is a hovel.  He's got this tiny little bed and the water doesn't work and there's no bathroom...I don't know if there's even electricity, the only light I saw was from the fireplace.  Why would he choose to live like that if all this is his?"

Glenda shrugged, glancing back at the baby that was squalling loudly now.  "Eh, fortunes come and go.  His was probably long gone before his great grandaddy was even born, but the blood and the name, that's what lives on.  And some men just like to live simple."

"But he's all alone up there."

"He's got the sheep.  And the local ladies take turns getting knocked up by him, so he's not quite as alone as you'd think."  She shot me a wicked grin.  "The only time he's truly alone is in between shagging and running the herd around the mountain.  Between those two activities I don't think he's got a lot of time to be lonely."

 

 

I sat in silence for a while, while Glenda went to the back to deal with some business...King, whatever his name was, what the hell kind of stupid name was that?...I was feeling kind of sick after what she'd just told me about him and his promiscuous proclivities.  That and the simple fact that he was no doubt the rudest man I'd ever encountered, surly and mean and completely unmannered, trying his best to abandon me out there in the storm...though somehow I had managed to keep up, just barely.  I doubted that was due to my own ability so much as his making sure I was still behind him every now and then, slowing down just enough to keep me in sight.  Or was I attributing far too much kindness to him?  Maybe he just hadn't wanted to have to deal with a dead non-local in his front yard.

But I'd be damned if he wasn't something close to the most beautiful human male specimen I'd ever seen.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop thinking about how his broad shoulders tapered down to his slim waist and those narrow hips, of how his spine dipped in at the small of his back and then curved out to his nicely shaped ass...I'd never in my life wanted to grab a man by the rear but god help me if it wasn't a valid wishlist item for me now.  And his face, though I hadn't really had much opportunity to analyze it up close, was absolutely a visage I could get into.  There was something both soft and sharp to it, a sort of beauty that ran incongruous to the rough demeanor and harsh manner of the man behind it.  It was as if his behavior was carefully crafted toward ragged unpleasantness to counteract the almost pretty quality of his features.

Because he was definitely pretty.  And apparently every woman in the village thought so.

"I'm going to have to go back up there, to his place," I said sheepishly, drawing a scolding look from Glenda when she came back to the table.  I hurried to explain before she could speak.  "I left something there, something I don't want him to find."

"And what would that be?"

The grimace I felt coming across my face wasn't even forced - I couldn't stop it, and it was bringing with it a burning sort of heat that made my cheeks feel feverish.  "My underwear.  It was still damp this morning and it felt horrible, so I took them off when I got dressed to leave.  He was hurrying me and I forgot to go back in and get them."

"Ohh girly," she sighed, shaking her head.  "Good luck."

 

 

Morning was just breaking over the hills when I got to the crest where my equipment was laying scattered, still near the makeshift road where I'd left it, but it had been gathered up and piled into a haphazard stack that I didn't remember doing.  There was a set of huge booted footprints in the mud, trailing up the hill straight to the pile, then continuing up over the crest where a million sheep hoofprints dotted the ground.   _He parked his herd and picked my stuff up._  I laughed a little, a bit confused as to why he'd do that, unless it was in his way.  But he hadn't thrown them into the creek or scattered them, so there was that at least.

I felt a little bit emboldened by this perceived kindness and headed down the hill, retracing our steps from the previous day.  If he was out with the sheep, I could maybe sneak into the cabin and retrieve my underwear and be long gone before he came back.

In retrospect, it was a horrible idea unlike any horrible idea in the history of big fucking horrible ideas.

But I had no way of knowing that until I got there and climbed up on a crate to peek in the window, just to make sure he wasn't back for breakfast.

He wasn't.  He was back for something else entirely.

 

 

I saw him and ducked quickly, nearly falling off the crate, certain that he'd either seen my head poking up outside the window or had heard me clumsily grabbing at the sill to steady myself - but after a nervous minute or two the door wasn't kicked open and I wasn't snatched by the hair down off my perch, so I held my breath and crept back up again for another look.

It took a few seconds, but my eyes adjusted to the dim light inside the cabin and focused on the scene in front of me.  He was laying on his back, stretched out, filling the length of the little bed;  there was something oddly tense about his posture though, not the relaxed fluidity of a body going limp in preparation for sleep.  He was rigid and breathing hard, I could see his chest rising and falling heavily.

It didn't dawn on me what I was seeing until he threw the blanket off.

My missing panties were in his hand.

He was rubbing them on his cock.

And he was very, _very_ stiff.

 

I don't know how long I stood there, perched precariously on that crate, peeping tomming on this man as he pleasured himself with my undies.  But I do know that by the time I climbed down and leaned against the side of the cabin, my legs were shaking and there was something wrong with my ability to breathe properly.

And the crotch of my jeans felt oddly damp.

I regathered my composure and headed back for the crest, trying to blot out what I'd seen, knowing full damn well that I wasn't going to be successful at it any time soon.

 

 

_To be continued..._


	4. Chapter 4

 

 **Far an taine ‘n abhainn, ‘s ann as mò a fuaim.**  
Where the stream is shallowest, it is noisiest.

 

 

The sky was clouding up again;  I stared up at the heavens with my hands out, silently - or maybe not so silently, I wasn't really listening - petitioning the weather to please stop abusing me so damn much.  I'd spent the entire morning and half the afternoon repairing my equipment and resetting it and trying my best to forget about what I'd seen, but was succeeding at exactly zero of the three endeavors.  My penetrometer fell over for the third time and I stood up, resisting the urge to kick it down the hill into the creek.

That damn man...the image of him on his bed, in the throes of pleasure with my underpants clutched in his hand, wrapped around his cock...that little scrap of ridiculous lacy silk that had been clinging to my own body just the previous morning, dragging sensually up and down the long thickness of _his_ body _this_ morning...it was giving me anxiety of the worst kind and my hands were shaking too hard to even assemble a simple tripod.  And I didn't really have much of an idea what I was going to do about it.  I couldn't exactly knock on his door and ask for my undies back, not that I wanted them now.  Sneaking in when he wasn't home was out of the question, since I had no clue when he was in or out.  And what would I do with them once I had them back, anyway?  Toss them in the damn fireplace would be the best option based on what I'd observed.  I'd stayed at the window long enough to see him finish, his back arching as his cock spurted, soaking the panties in his hand as he kept stroking himself through his climax.

It had been an impressive spurt.  Or series of spurts, if my memory could be trusted...I wasn't sure, as I was scrambling to get down off the wobbly crate without getting caught right about then and my recall was about as shaky as my knees.

No, if I got them back I'd be getting _way_ more back than I wanted.  An involuntary shiver shuddered through me when I thought about his come all over my underwear, of how they had hung limply through his fingers as his body relaxed and his chest heaved, that look of agonized bliss on his darkly handsome face before he let them fall onto his stomach.

Fuck.

I picked up the penetrometer and started trying to get it to stand upright again, shoving the unwelcome image out of my head, but the muddy ground was refusing to cooperate and I stomped around to the other side of my truck to try again on more solid ground.  A rumble of thunder growled threateningly at me and I glanced nervously up at the darkening sky.

_Yes Scotland, I know you hate me.  You're not my favorite either, just please let me finish this and we'll be out of each other's faces in a couple of weeks._

But would he use them again...?

My brain's refusal to turn loose of the purloined visual was bordering on obsessive and I leaned against my truck to get hold of myself.  He stole my undies, I stole a peek at him having a wank with them, that was fair wasn't it?  I wasn't sure how I felt about the possibility of him keeping them though, reaching under his pillow to drag them out every time he felt the need to relieve himself.  Or did he have a stash of pilfered panties under the bed and mine would just be tossed into the box to be pulled out at random?  I couldn't clear my head enough to sort out what I should do and his voice, that deep growling baritone, had haunted me all day and kept me from thinking straight...I could still hear him panting and groaning till finally there was a strangled gutteral snarl that signaled his release and cued me that it was time to get down off the crate and hightail it for the crest on shaky legs before he put himself back together and returned to the herd.

Or worse, found me sprawled in the mud outside his window.

The little gasping moan that had come right before the snarl was seriously messing with me.

And after all that obsessing, I still didn't have any idea what I should do.

Probably the only thing I did know for certain was that if it was going to drop a downpour on me again, there was no way I was sticking around.  The trees had ears...and impossibly long legs under worn brown leather kilts.  And panty fetishes, apparently.  I'd never survive waiting out another storm inside his cabin with the confusing mix of emotions that were screwing up my head.  Part of me - a fairly big part that seemed to include the regulation of my hormones - was finding him painfully attractive in a dangerous, mildly feral sort of way, a way that made my thighs feel quivery and weak.  But another part - the sensible part, the part that housed a highly developed sense of what's right and what's wrong and what's just plain stupid - felt disgusted and a little bit righteously repulsed by him.  If what Glenda said about him was true, that he was the sire of multiple illegitimate children in the village...

...what the hell concern was that of mine?

 _It matters,_ I scolded myself. _I don't care if he's beautiful, if he's strong and capable and improbably well read.  If he's banging every woman that he can fit into that tiny bed of his -_

_\- well that's his own damn business, isn't it?_

_Judge not, lest ye be judged._

Or some such nonsense along those lines.  

I stole a quick look over at the treeline but saw nothing, of course.  The man was like a wraith, I'd spent an entire night with him and still wasn't one hundred percent sure I could pick him out of a police lineup unless he raised his skirt.  One thing I _was_ sure of though.  I was embarrassed at myself.  I had taken an extra fifteen minutes that morning to do something borderline alluring with my hair, and had put on a little makeup.  To do fieldwork.  In the mud.

And now, most likely, in the rain too.

I had a pretty good idea of why, and it was sort of humiliating.

But the furry hood of my puffy coat was hiding the coif and the scarf wrapped around my face had likely already rubbed all my carefully applied cosmetics off.  Not that he would have noticed any of it anyway...the only time he'd even looked at me was to shoot a mocking sneer or annoyed glare in my general direction.  Something told me he was probably the kind of guy that hated makeup on women and my lipstick would only piss him off.

I was taking out my frustration on the now reset but suddenly malfunctioning soil analyzer when I heard a shrill whistle and jumped, letting out a decidedly silly sounding yelp that echoed against the treeline before I slapped my hand over my mouth to silence it.  I couldn't tell where it had come from so I stood in one spot, spinning around in a slow circle, trying to sort out the acoustics of the hills.  But acoustics weren't my area of expertise, and I couldn't even guess which direction the whistle originated from.

Until an entire flock of ratty bleating sheep came barreling over the crest, heading straight for me and my equipment.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me."

I jumped up in the bed of my truck and stood there as they stampeded past - though in all fairness, it was a very slow stampede, as apparently sheep don't get in much of a hurry about anything - trying with no success whatsoever to talk them into going around my equipment instead of knocking it over and trampling it.  I was on the very back edge of the tailgate yelling at the stragglers who were stomping on my lunch bag when a loud banging sound behind me startled me again.  I spun around to see the King himself, standing next to my truck, beating on the hood with his hand.

_"Come on bitches, move move move!"_

I stared at him as he walked along the length of my vehicle, pounding on it with his fist to get the last few sheep moving.  "Nice, you call them bitches.  Lovely.  Why am I not surprised?!"

He whistled again and I slammed my hands over my ears, wincing against the skull shattering pitch and unbelievable volume as I watched him hurl a gob of spit on the ground before splitting my ears with another shrill whistle.  "And now you're spitting.  Right where I'm analyzing the soil.  My results for this entire expedition are going to end up being a DNA report on a local sheepherder with atrocious manners.  Nice.  Could you maybe _not -_ "  He completely ignored me, clapping his hands toward the last handful of animals that were mulling around the area.  "You know what?  Never mind.  Your sheep shat there, you might as well just go ahead and take a piss on my gear while we're all here - give me a complete workup on your bodily fluids."

He glanced at me just long enough to smirk suggestively, tugging the front of his kilt down as he did exactly what I said.

"Oh my god.  You - you - "  I stammered stupidly as he peed all over the penetrometer and meter gauge and the muddy area surrounding them both.  "You're a damn heathen, you know it?"  He tucked himself back into the kilt and I could see his shoulders shaking as he laughed.

"You're in my way, woman."

"This is where I'm assigned to be!"  I knew I was standing with my hands on my hips and probably looking about as laughably nonthreatening as the muddy little lamb that had just trotted past me, but it felt like the top of my head was on fire and he wasn't going to take me serious anyway.  The cretin turned and looked me straight in the face for the first time, and god help me the only thought I could formulate at that moment was _there is no way his eyes are really that green._

"This is where _my sheep_ have been assigned to be for the last three hundred years, so fuck off with your gear."

I didn't have anything else to say and neither did he apparently, because without another word he headed off after the herd.  I watched him go, shaking with rage and trembling with something a little less angry but no less volatile that I could only interpret as a misguided surge of confused hormones.  He was just so damn _virile._ As I stood there in the bed of my truck staring at him while he tromped off down the hill, stepping easily across the wide creek with one long stride, I realized my cheeks felt hot and my hands were wobbly again.  I'd watched this guy masturbate with my underwear, and now here he was, back in my personal space, sort of.  I still wasn't sure how I felt about that, but my stomach was suddenly queasy as the foggy-window recollections of my panties wrapped around his stiff cock flooded back for the umpteenth time that day, unwelcome and exciting and disturbing all at once.  I glared at his broad back as he continued down the hill, completely uninterested in my presence even though he _knew,_ he _had_ to know, that those underwear were mine.

Something was on the tip of my tongue and just about to burst out of my mouth when he stuck one long arm up in the air, pointing at the suddenly ominous looking sky.

"Storm's comin'.  You should get off the mountain now, I won't be leading you down this hill again."

"You'd let me die out here, wouldn't you?"

"First time's ignorance," he shouted back, nudging a lazy sheep along with his foot, stopping to glance back at me with a smirk that I could see plainly even at that distance.  "Second time's pure stupidity."

 

My temper started rising and I bit back what I'd been about to say - something about not being such a giant bag of dicks to strangers, or some other completely ineffectual comment along those lines.  He was too far away to hear me now anyway.  But one simple truth rang clear in my head.  I'd seen his penis enough - about three times too many, in fact, for someone I wasn't in a sexual relationship with.  No way in hell was I going to get stranded up here again.

With a disgusted groan I decided against throwing a tarp over my equipment;  let the rain wash the man piss and sheep shit off of it, I wasn't in the mood to handle the excrement of two different species - none of which was mine - in one day.

 

I was halfway down the mountain when the downpour started and almost - _almost_ \- toyed with the idea of stopping to ask if he needed a ride when I passed him on the road.  He was walking in that relaxed, unhurried gait of a man who knows exactly where he's going and how long he has to get there.  But I kept going, stealing a quick glance at him in my side mirror as I put him behind me.  I may even have gunned it a little, in a completely childish and vindictive attempt at splashing mud all over him.  When I looked back again I was hoping to see him flipping me off or mooning me or something, anything to indicate I'd wrecked his day even just a little.

He was bending over to pick up a straggling lamb, completely unbothered by me.

 

When I got to the bottom of the hill I found out why my little prank had no effect on him.  The bastard had already one-upped me.  The gate across the road was shut and padlocked, and I had no choice but to climb over it and walk the rest of the way in the pouring rain, hoping I didn't get struck by lightning before I made it to town.

 

 

"I hate that man."

"Which man would that be?"  Glenda was giving me a barely contained little grin that told me she knew exactly who I was talking about and I refused to play along, sticking my tongue out at her as I tromped up the stairs to my room above the pub.  "You look like a long stretch of muddy road, dear."

"Oh?  Well ask his royal highness why that is!"

"You can ask him yourself, he's right over there."

"What?!"  I stopped halfway up the stairs, dripping water and mud all over the hardwood;  Glenda scowled at me but jabbed her thumb toward the back, trudging out from behind the bar with a mop to clean up the mess I was making.  Coming down a few more steps until I could see where she was pointing, I spotted my nemesis and felt my blood pressure shooting up.

He was sitting in the corner booth in the very back, looking every bit like Strider waiting for the Hobbits to come recruit him for a mission, silently draining a tall mug of black ale.

"How did he get here before me?  I passed him halfway down the mountain!"

Glenda hit my boots with the mop to get me to move.  "From the looks of you I'm guessing you had to leave your truck somewhere?"

"Yeah, the gate was locked at the bottom of the road."

"You may have noticed a rattly old jeep parked in your spot out front.  That's his.  I'd guess he came down the other way while you were footing it."

"There's another way down?"  Well that was just too much - nobody had told me about any other way down, and to add insult to injury _he was parking in my spot?_ I sloshed messily down the stairs and strode over to his table, shoving my finger out at him.

"You're a panty thief!"

He grinned, something dark and malicious and undeniably dangerous in that twisted little smile.  It reached his eyes and they sparked with something every bit as dangerous.  He didn't seem the slightest bit surprised that I knew he had my undies, and in that moment it occurred to me that he'd probably known all along that I was at his window.

"Consider it rent."

"Rent?  I slept on the damn floor!  You weren't even gentleman enough to offer me the bed!"  Shaking with something I wouldn't quite call rage so much as righteous indignation, I put my hands on my hips and glared at him.  He took a long drink from his glass and then set it down, turning it slowly with his fingers.

"Love, if I were to offer you me bed, you'd be swollen bellied by Spring."  His eyes raked over me harshly and he made a little scoffing sound.  "You've got a good build for breeding but you seem more the career type than the babe on your tit type."

I didn't even know what to say, standing there mouthing things that weren't coming out, glaring at him while his eyes stayed locked to mine over the top of his glass.  I knew Glenda was watching from the stairs where she was pretending to be mopping up the mud and rain that I'd tracked all over the place.  A few other customers were scattered around the room, likewise putting on a show of being more interested in their beers than in us, but I could feel every eye in the room burning into the back of my head as I stood there locked in a deathmatch staring contest with the so-called last of the Celt kings.

He finally grinned, standing slowly - that damn _unfurling_ thing he did, standing to full imposing height to tower over me as he dropped some money on the table, leaning in close enough for his breath to tickle my cheek when he exhaled.  I stood perfectly still, refusing to be intimidated by him, till I heard his softly wicked chuckle next to my ear.

"You can have 'em back, sweetness...but you'll have to trade me a new pair."  He moved away, still grinning, giving me a positively demonic wink as he tugged the collar of his coat up around his neck and headed for the door.  "The ones you left me are all used up."

 

 

 

_To be continued..._

 


	5. Chapter 5

  

 

 

 **Cha robh dithis riamh a’ fadadh teine nach do las eatarra.**  
Two never kindled a fire but it lit between them.

 

 

The filthy heathen, monarch of the hill, whatever the hell he was stayed out of my way for a few days, which was cool with me because not only did I get my equipment functioning again, but nobody peed on it, trampled it, or otherwise disrespected my work location just long enough for me to get my first reports completed and submitted.  The site was quiet, no stampedes, and I drove down the mountain each evening before dark without being harassed, insulted, or having to file any requests for equipment to replace things that managed to get broken by "local wildlife" - which wasn't so much a reference to the sheep as it was to their shepherd.

But even though my work was finally getting done and my reports were going in on time, I found myself glancing around expectantly far more often than I felt good about, almost hoping to see him watching me from the trees with that haughty smirk.  But the trees didn't seem to be housing any wraiths these days.

I sort of missed him, or the threat of him anyway.

And I'd started having dreams about him.

Not just daydreams, though I did fall prey to a fair share of those as well - but something about watching him get off with something that belonged to me, belonged _intimately_ to me - it had wheedled its way insidiously into my subconscious and I was waking up in cold sweats, shaking and breathing hard with my hand between my legs and the sheets all twisted up.  And always, always, there was his face, smirking at me, and that heavy bourbon brogue purring something that I couldn't understand no matter how closely I listened.  Even in my dreams he was probably cursing me out and I didn't know it.

One thing I was sort of proud of, though.  No matter how heated I felt upon waking, I never touched myself consciously.  I wasn't about to give him that, even though he would never know if I did it or not.  It was my ridiculous little way of staying one ahead of him, because I _knew_ he'd touched himself for me.

Or for my panties, anyway.

It was something at least.  But it was starting to drive me nuts, that infuriating little tickle that begged to be soothed.

 

 

Mid afternoon on the fourth day the peace between myself and the King came to a noisy end when a rumbling sound from over the crest brought me to my feet, scrambling to get myself and my gear out of the path of the tall dark demon and his fluffy white hellspawn that I knew were about to come pouring over the hill like a possessed bag of spilled marshmallows.  And god help me I was almost _giddy_ about it.  I ran over to my equipment and yanked it up out of the ground, rushing back to my truck to climb up in the back and wait for them to trample through my work site.  I was ready for him this time.  My analysis report for the day had just gone in on the single bar of internet reception I'd managed to grab by standing on the hood of my truck, and most of my gear was out of the way.  He could tear through as messily as he wanted to, it wasn't going to damage me one bit this time.

When he appeared at the top of the hill, all tall and long haired and kilted and impossibly _ridiculously_ masculine, I had to pull my hood down over my face to keep him from seeing my smug grin.

"You stupid caint, what're you doing here?!"

My grin vanished and I stared at him, covering my ears while he whistled to keep the sheep moving;  half of them seemed to want to loiter around my truck instead of continuing on down the hill and he picked up a stick to beat on the fender to get them running again.  I leaned over the side and snapped my fingers at him to get his attention.

"Excuse me, could you maybe not beat on my vehicle?  And if you call me a _caint_ one more time I'm afraid I'm just going to have to ask you to define it because I can't understand you most of the time and an insult isn't really insulting if the recipient doesn't know what it means, now is it?"

He glared at me with murder flashing in his eyes.  "Fucks sake woman, didn't anyone tell you to get off the mountain before _that_ gets here?"  He pointed to the horizon where a huge white cloud-looking thing was roiling in the sky.  I stood up and squinted at it, trying to understand why it wasn't good news.  It just looked like a big cloud, hanging kind of low to the ground.

"No...why?  Is that something bad?"

He shook his head and laughed, but it wasn't a happy sounding laugh at all.   _"That - "_  he pointed at it with his stick again - "is a fucking  _blizzard_ that will be hitting this crest in about twenty minutes, burying everything including _your_ dumb arse under several feet of snow."  He picked up what was left of my gear and threw it into the bed of the truck, then went around the back to close the tailgate with a much harder slam than was strictly necessary.  Before I realized what he was doing he had reached up and grabbed me by the front of my coat and yanked me out of the bed of the truck, pushing me against the fender as he set me down.  "Now get off this damn hill unless you want to die tonight."

And with that he walked off, whistling at a lamb that was playing next to the creek, never looking back at me even once.

 

 

I tried to do what I was told, I honestly did - but the truck the company had leased for me was a cranky old bastard with a tendency to crap out at inopportune times, and as far as inopportune times go, this one was pretty epic.

"Come _on_...oh come on... _please come on!!"_ I pumped the gas, tried and retried the ignition, popped the hood and got out to stare blankly at the motor before getting back in to start again.  But the engine soundly refused to turn over.

"Great.  I guess I want to die tonight."

I was slamming my forehead into the steering wheel lamenting my ridiculous luck when a loud banging on the driver side window made me jump;  I screamed before I realized it was just King, rapping on the glass with his knuckles and giving me a deathglare as I regathered my wits enough to roll it down.  He looked about ready to strangle me.

"Get out and come with me."

I obeyed without hesitating, grabbing my bag and stumbling clumsily out of the truck, trying to catch up to him.  He was already to the creek and wasn't slowing down, so I just ran along behind him the best I could, careful not to get too close because it was obvious he was angry about having to come back for me.

But he _had_ come back for me.

 

 

The wind had picked up considerably by the time we got to the field near his house and the temperature had dropped to something far more than chilling and only slightly less than debilitating;  I was shivering miserably inside my coat, slipping unsteadily on the ground that was already beginning to ice over when he suddenly stopped.  The sheep were moving toward a barn in the distance and he whistled at them a few times to keep them moving, then turned around to face me with an angry scowl.

"Get on to the cabin," he ordered, pointing to the far end of the field where the trees started again.  I remembered this bit of the trek from last time and knew the house wasn't far.  "Get inside and get the fire going."

"Where are you going - ?"

_"GO."_

He gave me a hard shove to motivate me into obedience and took off back the way we came, back in the direction of the creek.  I watched him for a few seconds, his long black hair blowing in the wind, just his worn leather coat to keep him warm, and wondered what on earth makes a man tough enough to live like this.

I pulled my hood over my face to shield my cheeks from the icy wind and started alone toward the cabin, picking up my gait when the first snowflakes started to fall.

 

 

By the time I got there it was coming down hard, the sudden gale force winds bringing the snow in sideways hard enough to sting when it hit my face.  I looked around frantically to see if I could see King anywhere, but all I could see was white.

I kicked the door open - it was already iced shut and it took two good whacks to break it loose - and slammed it shut before the snow could blow in behind me.  There was a sort of despair in my gut as I looked around the little cabin.  It looked exactly the same as it had the last time I'd been there.

_Oh god.  Why am I here again..._

 

 

The cabin was cold, the fireplace just barely smoldering with a few smoky coals that flared orange when I stirred them, and as I added wood and kindling and the fire slowly came back to life, the room started to warm.  Climbing up onto the bed to look out the window, I checked again to see if I could spot King in the storm, but visibility was declining rapidly and there was nothing to see.  Worry started to gnaw at me just a little - what if he got himself stuck out there?  What was he doing, anyway?   If anyone knew how to get around in a blizzard on this mountain, it had to be him, but that little bit of assumptive knowledge didn't really do much to settle my rising nerves.  I sat down on the bed and fished my cellphone out of my bag.  No bars.

_Why am I not surprised._

Sitting down on the bed, I think I most likely pouted a little bit, thinking of all the things that could go wrong here.  If he got lost or killed out there, or if he was bunking down somewhere else to wait out the storm, I could be long dead inside this hovel and probably no one would find me till the Spring thaw.  There was no cellphone reception and I didn't see any evidence of a landline.  And I was sitting on _that_ bed, the one he slept in, the one he used to torment my innocent undies during mid-morning self pleasuring rituals.  In a moment of annoyed self righteousness I got down on my hands and knees and looked underneath it.

There was nothing there but a spare pair of worn out work boots and a dog bowl.

I think I was relieved that there wasn't a ratty box of women's underwear stuffed next to the boots.  Grimacing with dread, I slid my hand slowly up under his pillow.  Nothing there either.

 _Okay, so he keeps his conquest trophies stashed somewhere else._  But I wasn't a conquest, a little fact that gave me both a silly tickle of pride and a gut punch of deflated self esteem.

But still...he had obviously _very_ much enjoyed himself with my panties.

With nothing else to do, I snooped around a bit, looking for little signs of life that told me what he did when he was home.  A book lay face down on the chair by the fireplace.   _Wuthering Heights._  I almost laughed.  The idea of rough, rude, mean natured, spitting pissing cursing King McClary reading the most heartwrenchingly tragic of the Bronte romances was just almost too much and I dared to pick it up to see what part he was on.  The page was earmarked on Catherine's overheard proclamation that marrying Heathcliff would degrade her.  I put it back down quickly in exactly the same spot so he wouldn't know I'd touched it, but I couldn't help smirking a bit.

_Hope you like angst, dickhead._

 

 

I'd dozed off in front of the fire when the door slammed open, filling the room with a blast of chilly air and a fine white cloud of snow that ushered in the King, scowling and grumpy and looking very frostbitten and decidedly un-royal as he stalked over to the fireplace to warm himself without a word.  I scooted out of his way but watched him closely, trying not to look like I was watching him.  He was shivering and his hair was full of snow, the white flakes an almost shocking contrast against the coal black before they melted into nothing.

A nothing that was decidedly wet when he shook off like a dog, spraying it all over me along with what was left of the snow from his coat.

I didn't say anything, just got up and moved further away from him, silently acknowledging as I brushed the water off my face that this was his home, his territory, and he was undeniably the king here.  It seemed to be enough for him and he did a good job of acting like I wasn't there at all, going about his business after he'd warmed a bit, stacking more wood in the fire and kicking it in with his boot.  When he had settled a bit I looked at one of the stacks of books and tried to decide if I should instigate a conversation before things got even more uncomfortable than they already were.  I noticed the sole of his boot was on fire and he didn't even seem to care, just kicked another shifting log back into the fireplace and then slowly stomped out the flame.

_Well, demons don't fear fire, do they?_

"You have a lot of books," I said stupidly, stating the most obvious fact in the room.  "You like to read?"  It had fallen out of my brain and rolled off my tongue before I realized I was even speaking.  He clapped his hands together and blew into them.

"No, I keep them around for the aesthetic."

I stared at him, shocked to hear him use a word I would never in a million years have guessed was in his working vocabulary.  Smartass, boss level.  So I did the only thing I could think of, and that was to keep bugging him with more statements of the obvious.  "These are all classics."

He turned slowly and gave me a blank look, his dark furrowed eyebrows the only hint of expression on his face.  I felt suddenly a little bit nauseous and stopped talking, knowing if I kept going I'd never be able to hide my unease;  he was still looking at me and I moved away, closer to the door - though I had no idea what I thought that would get me, since the blizzard was raging fullblown now.  He finally shook his head and stood up, shrugging out of his coat and dropping it on the bed as he moved past me to the little kitchen area.

"I expected Dog and Gun magazine or something," I continued blabbering.   _Might as well dig myself in just as deep as I can so that when he throws me outside I can at least say I had it coming._  I turned away so he wouldn't see my mouth moving and added quietly, "Or Sheepfucking for Advanced Users".  I didn't think he heard me, but when he slammed two bowls down on the table I jumped and spun around.  There was a wicked glint of a grin on his face as he sat down and pulled one bowl in front of himself, pushing the other across the table.

"My sheep do love me."

_Dammit, he heard me._

"I'll bet they do."  He was already eating, not waiting for me, and I noticed his posture was odd - leaned over the table with one arm around his bowl, like a dog keeping other dogs away from his dinner.

"Were you a runt?"

He didn't stop eating and he didn't answer.

"It's just that...you're protecting your food, the way you're sitting.  Did you have a lot of siblings?"

He looked up at me for just a brief second and then went right back to eating, making it painfully obvious he had no intention of participating in this conversation.  I shrugged and sat down in front of my own bowl.  It was some kind of cold stew with mystery meat whose origins I really didn't want to think about.

"Where did you go?  When you took off, earlier."

He pushed his bowl away and sat back;  it was already empty and I hadn't even taken my first bite yet.

"One of the lambs went missing."

I thought about the cute little baby sheep I'd seen him picking up at the creek to help it get across, how he'd tucked it inside his coat and carried it.

"Did you find it?"

"Yep."

I hesitated to ask, but remembering how sweet the little thing was, I had to know.  "Alive?"

He nodded, standing to reach up into one of the upper cabinets, bringing down a bottle of red wine that he sat on the table in front of me.  His arms were so long he barely even had to stretch to reach it and I caught myself feeling a little bit hot-cheeked, though I didn't know why.  Maybe it was the idea of those impossibly long arms wrapping themselves around me...?  His hands were big too, I noticed when he put the bottle down.  Big hands with long fingers.  I blinked hard to break my wandering line of thought and tried to bring myself back to the subject of the lost lamb.  I was relieved that he'd found it, but the heat in my cheeks was already spreading to the rest of my head and I felt myself getting flustered.  And like I do when I get flustered, I started to rattle.

"What was wrong with the one I saw you helping last week, during that first storm?  It was on the ground."

"She's going lame."

"Oh."  I wasn't sure I wanted to hear the details of this story, but I couldn't stop talking;  I watched him pour us each a big glass of wine and wondered if it was the standard dinner beverage of the highlands or if he was going to try to get me drunk and take advantage of me.  With deep shame I found myself doing mental calculations on how many glasses I could drink and still maintain an active memory of whatever happened afterwards.  "Do you take them to the vet when they get like that?"

"She'll be in the pot by Spring."

I stared at my bowl.  "Is this the last one that went lame?"

He grinned, swallowing his wine loudly, his eyes sparking with a rude sort of mischief over the top of his glass.  "I used to have a dog."

"Okay."

He grinned again and took another drink.  I didn't know where this was going, but I knew I hadn't seen a dog around.

"So what happened to the dog?"

A wicked wink as he grabbed the bottle and headed to the fireplace to settle into his chair, leaving me at the table with my still untouched bowl of stew.

"Went lame."

 

It was obvious he was just baiting me now.  With his back to me, sitting in the chair in front of the fire, he seemed a little bit less intimidating - though not by much.  I ate my stew in silence, staring at the back of his head for a long time until I finished and took our dishes to the sink, not sure if I should try to turn on the water or if it would spit angrily at me for five seconds like last time before shutting off.  He hadn't said a word since leaving the table and I wondered if he'd dozed off...the room was comfortably warm now and I was feeling a little bit drowsy myself.

But it had been probably fifteen minutes since I'd said anything, and the word meter in my brain was demanding that I turn the knob and crank a few more out.  Something about this man gave me a mighty need to irritate him, maybe because that was really the only time he paid any attention to me.

And for some reason, his attention was something I was starting to crave.

"That tasted more like beef than dog to me.  Not that I'd know what dog tastes like, but I'm fairly familiar with beef."  There was no response except for the popping of a log rolling over in the fire.  "They say you're really a king, that it's not just a name."

He turned his head just far enough for me to see that he was smiling a little.

"Is that what they say."

"Yeah."  I decided to just leave the dishes in the sink and picked up my wine, wondering if I should join him by the fire or keep to the relatively safe distance of the kitchen.  He wasn't acting terribly annoyed and it made me feel a little bit braver, though not quite brave enough to approach him.  "Is it true?"

He turned his face back to the fire again, a heavy silence hanging uncomfortably between us for a long time before he finally picked up his book and opened it.  I noticed for the first time that he wore a thick silver ring on his right hand, the shape of a crown.

_That ring he wears, it's all the proof he needs._

_Proof of what?_

_That he owns every damn last one of us._

"So where have you been for the last three days?  I haven't seen you on the crest."

"Why were you up here with a blizzard coming in?"

His quick changing of the subject took me off guard and I stammered stupidly for a second to get my footing back.  "I didn't know about it.  The weather report didn't say anything - "

He laughed, a bitter little sneering sort of laugh that put me instantly on alert.  "The weather on this mountain isn't the same as the weather down in the village.  They don't put the crest on the evening news."

"Then how am I supposed to know?"

He shook his head, then tipped his glass up and drained his wine.  "I went to Glasgow."

He'd shifted gears again and I realized he was probably doing it just to throw me off.  "You go to the city?"

"You think I've never been off this hill?  Hell I've even been in a car once or twice."

"I know you have, you parked in my spot at the pub."

Both our voices were beginning to rise just a bit and he reached down to pick up the wine bottle next to his feet, drinking straight from it this time.  When he finally lowered it, he wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve and heaved an intensely annoyed sigh.  "Do you always talk so bloody much?"

"Usually, yeah."

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why do you talk so damn much?  Isn't that usually a sign of insecurity or self esteem issues?"

"So on top of Bronte and Austen you read Cosmopolitan too?"

There was an explosive shattering _boom_ as he threw the empty bottle into the fire and I jumped, taking a few steps back without thinking.

"Fucking hell," he muttered, scrubbing at his face with his hands like he was suddenly exhausted.  "Three days of this.  Don't think for a second I won't send you down the hill on foot if you bother me." 

"Sorry."  I stood silently for a long while before a chilly blast of air made me realize how close I was to the door;  I hadn't noticed myself moving that far from the table, or moving at all really, but I'd slowly inched my way toward the only escape route that I could see.  It had been an involuntary response to his violent reaction and I scolded myself inwardly for letting him make me so nervous. _I'm not scared of him._ "No wait, I'm not sorry, I'm the one that's stranded in a blizzard with a foul tempered antisocial shepherd that calls me made up names!"

"And whose cabin are you stranded in?"

"Oh.  Yeah..."

He pulled his chair a little closer to the fire and went back to his book, making it abundantly clear that he was done talking to me.

 

 

Night fell with that same astonishing quickness that I'd noticed the first time I was brought here, like a clap-on/clap-off lamp, daylight one moment and then absolute pitch the next.  My host, if he could be called that, had been reading silently for most of the evening and soundly ignoring me, lowering his book only long enough to point me to a flashlight hanging by the door and indicate with a quick jab of his thumb which direction the outhouse was in.  The snow was blinding and the howling wind completely deafening, but I'd managed to get there and back on my own, not noticeably any worse for the wear.  When I returned in a blast of blowing snow that exploded a good five feet past me into the room, he was finally out of his chair, sitting on the edge of the bed unlacing his boots.

I looked at him nervously, the reality of the situation hitting me hard as I remembered how uncomfortable I'd been the last time, huddling cold and wet on the floor next to his bed with just a blanket.  I had my heavy coat this time, but there was a good thirty degree difference in the temperature since the last time I'd slept here.  Glancing over at the pantry in the kitchen, I saw that the heavy wool blanket I'd used was no longer there.

It was on his bed.

I took my coat off and shook the snow out of it, holding it close to the fire to warm it, then put it back on and tugged it tight around me.

"I guess I'll sleep in my old spot."

"Suit yourself."  He stood suddenly and I had to scramble back to get out of his way, almost stumbling over the chair;  when I got my footing back and looked at him he was stripping out of his heavy flannel shirt and was now barechested in front of me, unbuckling his kilt.

"Don't sleep naked while I'm here!"

"You could do worse."

The kilt hit the floor with a heavy thud and I looked away quickly as he climbed into his bed, settling onto his back with the blankets pulled only halfway over his stomach.  His eyes were closed when I peeked, so I stole a quick look at what I could see, my breath going a little bit funny when I noticed the soft looking dark hair that spread across his lower belly.  I had a shameful urge to touch it, to see if it was as silky as it looked, but something told me if I put my hands on him he would make me regret it a thousand ways before morning.

But he'd barely even looked at me since the start of the storm, and he certainly didn't seem interested in me now.

His voice suddenly broke the silence and I jumped, spinning around quickly to put my back to him, hoping to god he hadn't caught me looking.

"You gonna bunk down or you gonna stand there all night staring at me?"

Shit.

"I...I wasn't...oh god.  Sorry, I just, I can't really figure out what I'm supposed to do.  I mean there's no blanket for me or anything."

He sighed loudly and I could hear the bed springs creaking as he shifted around.  "If you're planning on sleeping on the floor, let me be the first to tell you that this floor isn't sealed and in a few hours the storm will have blown about two feet of snow up under it.  I dunno what sort of cold you're used to, but I can promise you it's not like the cold you're going to feel tonight."

"I'm from Philadelphia, we get pretty major winters."

He laughed a little, a dark sort of mocking chuckle that told me he wasn't impressed.

"Shed your boots and get in here."

"What?"

He patted the outer edge of the bed, opening one eye to look at me when I didn't obey.  "Look sweetness, you're welcome to give it a go on the floor if you're that hellbent on suffering, but you _will_ freeze, especially now since your clothes are damp."

I reached down to feel my jeans, realizing immediately that he was right - they were damp and cold from my trip to the outhouse, and so was my coat.  I probably would freeze, and in the morning he'd find me huddled by the fire with a thick layer of ice cementing me to the floor, but my pride would be intact and I would have the intense pleasure of being able to say I'd managed on my own.

But, of course, I would be frozen.  All my pride and stubbornness gone, I tugged off my boots and scampered across the cold floor, climbing into the tiny bed next to him as he held the blankets up just long enough for me to get under them.

"Mind your manners," I warned, promptly turning my back to him.  "If I catch you trying to feel me up - "

"Don't flatter yourself," he interrupted in a rumbly growl as he lowered the blankets over both of us.  "If I wanted you I'd have had you by now."

His words both stung and angered me, but I bit my tongue...the last thing I wanted was to be kicked out of the relative comfort of the little cot and his surprisingly warm body, lying close behind me, the wonderful heat already radiating off him and soaking into my chilled skin.  I knew he wouldn't hesitate to boot me out if I irritated him.

I was twisting around trying to get comfortable when he grabbed my hair and gave it a hard tug.  "Be still." 

"This bed is tiny!  Why don't you have a bigger bed?"

"Why don't you stop bitching."

"You could move over a bit." 

A long arm shot past my face as he pointed at the floor.

"Okay, okay.  But you could put some pants on."

He pointed at the floor again, then turned to put his back to me, indicating the conversation was over.

"Fine."

I scooted to the very edge of the bed, but his butt was against my butt and it felt...weird.  He wouldn't move no matter how much I pushed back against him and I knew I'd end up falling off the bed at some point, so after much fidgeting I finally swallowed my pride and turned over to snuggle up to his back.  It was amazing how warm his skin was even though he was completely naked under the blankets.  I tried to angle myself so that there was a little bit of space between our lower bodies, but eventually I gave up on the modesty and propriety and just spooned him.  He was warm all the way down to his feet and before I realized what I was doing I had nudged my legs in between his, scooting closer and closer until I could feel every inch of his back side against me.  His deep, steady breathing told me he was already asleep, and I lay there listening to it and the howling wind for so long that by the time I finally drifted off, the fire was burning out in the hearth.

 

I woke to a strange sound and turned over to see him crouched in front of the fireplace, stoking the fire into a nice hot little inferno that radiated quickly to where I was laying.  At some point during the night I'd squirmed out of my bulky coat and it was all bunched up;  it was uncomfortable and as I tugged it out from under me he turned to look at me, his eyes falling to the top buttons of my shirt.  I looked down, my cheeks going hot when I saw they'd worked their way open to expose a fair amount of cleavage and that his hungry eyes were taking it all in greedily.

When he stood, all my own eyes could focus on was the thick cock hanging heavily between his legs, stirring lazily to attention as he came back to the bed and climbed over me to get in.

I felt it against my back when he settled, him spooning me this time, but after pushing up against me briefly he stilled and I heard his breathing slow down to the relaxed cadence of sleep.  I waited until he was completely still before I slowly reached up to button my shirt, but he slipped his arms around me and grabbed my wrists, pressing my hands and his own against my chest.

"Be still, girl," he whispered against my ear.

I don't know why - maybe because it was his house and his bed - but for some reason I obeyed, laying perfectly still in his arms, trying hard to ignore the stiff part of him that was nudged up against my bottom.  But he was so warm and he was holding me so tight, I felt safe and comfortable, and not even the banging of the window shutters in the howling wind outside could keep me from falling quickly back to sleep.

 

 

 

_To be continued..._


	6. Chapter 6

 

 

 

 

 

 

  **Is fheàrr teine beag a gharas na teine mòr a loisgeas.**  
The little fire that warms is better than the big fire that burns.

 

 

When I woke the next morning, cold but cozy with the blankets and my coat piled up on top of me, King was already up and gone.  I'd expected that, but I could still hear the wind howling and there wasn't much sunlight coming through the windows, so I knew he couldn't be taking the sheep anywhere in this weather.  His side of the bed was cold so he'd obviously been out of it for a long time, but I couldn't remember being aware of him climbing over me to get up.

The fire had been stoked but was starting to die down, so I got up and tugged my coat around myself to put some wood on it, feeling a little bit sleepy still but oddly...pleased?  It struck me strange when I thought back to the previous night.  He'd never even touched me, except for that brief pushing against me as he was falling asleep.  He'd been aroused, obviously.  I'd felt it against my back, there was no mistaking it - besides the fact that I'd seen it when he got up from stoking the fire, unless I'd been half asleep and dreaming that part.

But I hadn't dreamed the part about him pushing it against my back.  I'd definitely felt that...the hard, solid heat of him, pressing into the base of my spine, just above my butt and then nudging up under it when he shifted.  It had felt a hundred times hotter than the rest of his warm body and I knew I'd subconsciously pushed back against him, something primitive and needy in me hoping he would take my awkward scooching as permission to satisfy his needs.  But he hadn't.  He'd laid one arm over me and made me be still, halting me from fixing my shirt, holding my hands so that I couldn't.  Why had he done that?

I looked down at my open buttons.  They looked just like they had the night before, the top two unbuttoned, the third gaping where my shirt was twisted.  My bra had shifted and my boobs were half out of it, pushed up and sort of spilling out, and I wondered if he'd looked at me when he was getting out of bed that morning, if he had paused for a moment to stare at my breasts and if the sight of me had affected him in any way.  Had he moved to the chair by the fire to pleasure himself while looking at me, sleeping there in his bed with my chest half hanging out?  Had he put the blankets and my coat over me afterward, eaten his breakfast, gotten dressed and left to do whatever it was he was off doing without waking me?

Or had he just woken up next to me, groaned in annoyance, and tossed the blankets over me as he climbed out of bed to go about his business without giving me a second thought?

I wasn't sure why it mattered, or if it did matter, to be honest.  But it was bugging me, and the possibility that he'd felt no attraction for me whatsoever was gnawing at my gut so hard that I felt sick, the oddly pleased feeling beginning to fade away, replaced with something far less enjoyable.

_Just stop it.  You're being stupid.  This motherless cur's reaction to you doesn't define you._

_He's not important._

But it brought up the painful memory of someone else and their indifference toward the end, and that was messing me up.

 

 

I ate the breakfast he'd left out for me, some cold cereal and milk with toast that looked like it had been browned on the open fire, then zipped my coat up to the neck and stepped outside to see if it would become quickly evident where he was.  It was still snowing hard and he'd shoveled a path from the front door to the barn.

_Well, that makes it fairly obvious._

I followed the path, shocked at how blisteringly cold it was, seriously considering turning around and going back to the house before I even made it to the halfway point;  but over the wind I could hear the sounds of the sheep, and mixed somewhere in their bleating and braying, I heard his voice.

The barn door was huge and heavy and I had to put all my weight into it to pull it open, but once the wind caught it it slammed violently against the side of the barn, knocking a huge sheet of ice off the roof that crashed into shards behind me;  I was holding onto the big brass handle and it yanked me with it, slinging me off my feet and into the snow about five feet away.  I could hear King yelling angrily from inside the barn as I gagged on a mouthful of snow, frantically scrubbing it out of my eyes.

_"Shut the damn door!!"_

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"  I was crawling around trying to see through all the blinding white, confused when I saw something fly past me, deafened by the roaring of the wind and somewhere underneath it the sound of King's voice, shouting furiously through the din.  When I could finally see again, I knew I was in trouble.

Sheep were charging out of the barn into the snow, obviously panicked and as blind as I was.

"Oh my god...I'm so sorry...I'm sorry!"

King was tackling them one at a time, hauling them up and shoving them back into the barn, but it looked like at least a dozen had escaped and were thrashing around in the two-foot deep drifts on either side of the path that had been shoveled;  a couple had stayed on the path and were halfway to the cabin, bleating frantically as they ran for the door.

"Get off your arse and grab them!!"

I scrambled to my feet, falling a few times on the slick ice that had fallen from the roof, grabbing desperately at the closest animal as it thrashed around in a panic.  I managed to get it by one of its back legs, but I had no clue what to do with it.

"I got one!"

"Drag it to the barn, idiot!"

I could barely hear him over the wind and the noisy sheep, but it was clear he wasn't happy with me.  I started trying to drag the crazed fluffy beast toward the barn door, but it was a full grown ewe and she was determined not to go quietly.  She got in a couple of good solid kicks before I let go, scared to death that she was going to bite me, and saw King giving me a murderous glare from several yards away where he was carrying two more back to the barn.  I could see the anger in his eyes as he tossed them inside and turned to grab the one I'd let go of.  It was the last one I could see, so I brushed as much snow off of myself as I could and followed him in.

He was closing the pen while I tried to tug the big heavy door shut, but I was having zero success because of the strong wind resistance pushing against it.  After a minute of letting me struggle, he finally came over and grabbed it, pulling it shut while I stumbled and fell down next to him, grabbing at his legs in a futile attempt to keep from crashing on my face.

The look he gave me when he looked down at me was pure revulsion.

"You're about useless, aren't you?"

I glared up at him, the thought entering my mind briefly that I could swing my leg up and give him a good solid shin to the nuts before he had a chance to react, but settled for trying to match his expression instead.  "Your sheep are stupid.  Who runs out into a storm like that?"

"You did."

"I didn't plow face first into a two foot snowdrift!"

He shook his head, reaching down to swipe his hand across my face, not very gently.  A big dollop of snow fell off.

"You didn't, huh?"

I sat there staring at him petulantly as he walked away, obviously done with me.  I didn't know why I kept making him so mad - apparently our stars were not only misaligned, they weren't even in the same solar system with each other.  Possibly different universes.  And mine was probably a meteor anyway, hurtling dangerously on some locked-in trajectory toward an unmovable object, most likely with a nuke attached to it.

A nuke in a fucking kilt.

I knew I had nothing to lose, so I decided it was time to let him know what I thought of him.

"You're an asshole."

He didn't even skip a beat before responding "You're a useless caint."

_"What the hell is a caint?!!"_

He stopped where he stood, by the pen gate, with his back to me - but even though I couldn't see his face, I knew what it looked like right that moment.  Annoyed, irritated, angry, with a dark scowl furrowing his brow and a fierce rage flashing in his eyes.  I'd seen it enough already to sense it was there.

But there was no way I could have sensed what he did next.

Before it registered in my head that he had even turned around, he was in front of me, grabbing me hard between the legs, so hard that it hurt.

 _"This is a caint,"_   he snarled, his icy breath billowing white fog from his mouth like dragon smoke.  I yelled something incomprehensible in my outrage at being grabbed, especially being grabbed _there,_ and tried to back away from him...but his other hand was gripping my upper arm tight enough to leave a mark and he wasn't letting go.

"You mean you've been calling me a _cunt_ all this time??  You rude jackass!!"

"Shut up, bitch - I've heard about enough out of you."

He hauled me up and threw me easily into the hay that was piled around the pen, grabbing me by my ankles when I tried to scramble away.  I flipped over onto my back to kick at him but he quickly pinned me at the hips, his hands going to my jeans to yank them open and pull them down.  It was fast and I didn't have a chance to stop him before he had them tugged down my thighs;  by the time my shock and anger at having my pants pulled down had abated and I realized what was about to happen, he was between my knees with his hand on the belt of his kilt, opening it.

"What are you - what are you doing?!"

Before I could break away from him, he laid down on top of me and pinned me with his body, one hand reaching between us to pull my panties down roughly.  I struggled against him but he was too big, too heavy, and far too strong...in a matter of moments he had my legs pried apart and was pushing in between them, and when I felt his cock pressing against me my head finally cleared enough that I realized what was happening.

_Oh my god._

But I had no desire to scream, and my struggles calmed to halfhearted squirming as he pushed into me, the searing stab of pain when my body gave way to his intrusion making me cry out - but not in protest.

Because under the discomfort, beyond the humiliation, something else was tugging at my awareness, pricking at my nervous system.

Somewhere deep inside me, _I wanted this._

 

 

For the first time since I'd met him, I finally had no words and no urge at all to speak.  All I wanted to do was hold onto him, but the barn was so cold I couldn't relax and it hurt, the tension in my muscles as I clenched against the icy temperature making it difficult for me to accept him easily.  I heard myself whimpering as he pushed into me and squirmed around under him, trying to ease it.  The only place I was warm was where his body was rubbing against me.

"King...I'm cold..."

_"Shhhh."_

I felt him tugging at the sides of my panties, pulling them back up my legs;  it didn't register in my heated brain what he was doing until I heard his breathing speed up, the deepening of his voice as a heady moan escaped his throat.  I reached down and put my hand between my thighs.

He had my underwear pulled up tight against the underside of his cock, letting it scrape against him each time he thrust into me.  He didn't stop me when I touched him, tentatively, my fingers brushing over his thick shaft when he pulled it out, groaning when he pushed it back in, and somewhere in the hazy fog that had become my conscious awareness I knew that I was arching my back up to meet him.  But he was way ahead of me and I wondered, briefly, how long he'd been thinking about doing this.

I heard a distinct shift in his voice that told me he was going to finish soon, and as his thrusts quickened I just held on the best I could, trying to concentrate on the fiercely warm _needy_ thing that was growing in my lower belly.  It was intense and I pushed my hips up against him to try to satisfy it, but the rubbing of his body against me wasn't enough and I groaned miserably knowing there was little chance he'd care.

His face was next to mine and I listened to his ragged breathing, felt the scratch of his two day old beard scraping against my cheek, and wondered if he would kiss me if I turned my face toward his.

"King - "

_"Stop talking."_

I don't even know what I wanted to say to him, but I kept trying to say it and kept failing, my words stolen away each time by a hard thrust that took my breath away, replacing it with moaning gasps that sounded of desperation and need.  But they were beginning to be silenced as well, by the sounds of his own frantic need for relief, and as I raised my knees to clutch into his sides I could already feel him trembling.

He came with a stuttering groan and pulled out of me quickly, standing between my legs and tugging his kilt back up to cover himself.  It hurt when he withdrew and I gasped at the suddenness of it, reaching down to pull my panties up when I opened my eyes and saw him looking down at me with that half crazed, still hungry look in his eyes.  Like a wolf, undecided as to whether it wants to eat some more or walk away from the carcass it's devoured.  I felt my face go hot with embarrassment as his stare moved down to my underwear;  sitting up quickly, I tugged my jeans up and looked up in surprise and doubt when he held his hand out to me.

There was nothing in his face to tell me whether he could be trusted or not, so I just swallowed my apprehension and took it.

 

 

He led me back to the cabin, shutting the door quickly behind us so the snow couldn't blow in and steal all the warmth from the room.  I was feeling slightly in shock, not really believing what had just happened, wondering blankly if he would be indifferent to me again now that it was done.  The tension between us had been palpable and it had only stood to reason that eventually something would happen...though I had pretty much ruled it out based on his seeming lack of attraction to me and my uncanny ability to piss him off just by existing.

The look on his face was unreadable when he turned to look at me, snow falling from his hair, his cheeks red from either the cold wind or the physical exertion he'd just expended in the barn.  There were snowflakes on his eyelashes and I thought in that moment he looked more human than demon, though a memory from a fairytale was running through my head, reminding me that wraiths often changed their appearance to trick mortals into trusting them.

I was still thinking about that when he pulled the buttons of my coat open, tugging it off me, quickly dispensing of my shirt the same way till I was standing in front of him in just my bra and blue jeans.

"King - "

He shushed me by lowering his head to my chest, pressing his warm lips to the swell of my breast where my bra pushed it up.  I felt his fingers slip inside the cup and tug it down, sliding over my nipple slowly as his other hand went around my back and unhooked it, letting it fall.  My eyes clenched shut hard against the overwhelming sensory overload of his rough scratchy whiskers scraping over my bare skin, his stubbly chin scratching across my painfully sensitive nipple as he took it in his mouth to suck it.  He was handling me much more gently than I expected and I heard a little moan escape my lips as my hands came up to tangle in his long hair.

"What we did in the barn didn't bring you much pleasure," he murmured, turning me around, wrapping one arm around my front and moving his hand down between my legs to rub me through my jeans.  I tried to squirm away from him but he had me boxed in inside his arms, with his other hand on the table that was now in front of me.  "Be still, mouthy wench, and I'll finish you."  The hand on the table came up to squeeze my breast while the other undid my pants and pushed them down, sliding back around me again to nudge in between my legs.

He was suddenly rubbing me hard and I didn't want it - the way he'd treated me in the barn was still stinging my pride and the way he was handling me now, alternating confusingly from gentle and sensual to rough and uncaring, was the last thing I thought I could possibly desire.  It hurt between my legs and from the stinging burn I felt certain that I was probably bleeding a bit... _oh god, what have I done..._

"King...please - "

Before I could finish my plea he had me face down over the table, bent at the hips and pulling me back against him as he tugged my panties down just far enough to expose me, spreading me with his fingers and pushing himself inside me.  It was quick and it hurt, but when I felt him slide into me there was a chill, a nervous shiver, that ran through me.  I didn't understand what it was at the time, but as he pulled my arms around behind me and anchored my wrists at the small of my back with one hand, I started to realize something was up with my body.

It was cooperating.

And the worst part was that he knew it.

 

 

He pushed into me a few times while I whimpered, still squirming against him despite his grip on my hands behind my back;  my struggling seemed to excite him and he grunted loudly, his body tensing behind me, slamming hard into my back one last time before he trembled against the backs of my thighs and let go of my arms.  I didn't realize until he moved away from me that he'd come inside me again, when I felt the warm thick fluid slowly dribbling down my inner thigh.  It tickled and it drew my attention downward to my jeans, bunched up around my boots, and for some reason all I could think was  _well those have got to go._

Bending over slowly to tug my boots off, I kicked out of my jeans and left them on the floor, pulling my panties back up as if that would afford me some sort of protection from the fiery green eyes that I could feel burning into me.  He was watching, standing behind me undressing himself, his own clothes dropping to the floor next to mine.

I thought I should be mad.  I felt certain there should be anger and righteous indignation boiling in my gut at this rough arrogant jackass of a man and the way he'd just treated me.  But the only anger I felt was at myself, because god help me, I wanted to feel it all again and I didn't care if it hurt or if I bled or if the pleasure was his alone.  Because it had been a very long time since a man had touched me, and even longer since the last time I'd _wanted_ a man to touch me.  But since the first moment I'd laid eyes on this demon all I could think about was his skin against mine...and now I'd felt it.  Not just on me, but _in_ me.

And now all I wanted was more of it.

The tickling trickle of his come dribbling slowly down the inside of my knee caught my attention again and I was looking down at it, on the verge of tears in my confusion about my own feelings, when he grabbed me by my waist and hefted me up onto his hips to carry me to the little bed.  All I could think to do was hold onto his neck as he sat down with me and then laid back on his back, pushing me into a sitting position on his groin with his still stiff cock between his stomach and my underside.

His touch was much lighter this time when he laid his hand on my lower belly, pressing his thumb against my clit to rub it.

 _"Come,"_   he whispered in that smooth, thick brogue that felt to my ears like warm whiskey feels to the gut - burning, shocking at first, then oddly soothing and quickly intoxicating.

I wasn't sure what I felt, but I do know I was nodding my head, ready to obey him.

Not another word was spoken between us as he stroked me to release, pushing himself into me again so that he was inside me when I finally came.  His eyes were open, watching my face as I dissolved into whining little sobs of pleasure, sitting there trembling on his stomach with my mouth dropped open at the sheer unbelievable intensity of it.  My body just _let go_ and it felt like I was coming apart in a million tiny pieces, shattering like the ice that had fallen from the roof, crashing to the ground in scattering shards of sparkling self destruction.

I couldn't look at him for a long time.  But I could feel his hands on my hips, moving me gently, his long fingers digging into my skin as he kept pushing and pulling me slowly back and forth on him, my softly throbbing underside sliding easily in the wetness that soaked us both.  He was quietly, skillfully, bringing me back to that pinnacle again, and I dropped my head back and groaned when I felt my belly tightening a second time.

He murmured something when he felt me tensing, turning me onto my back to kneel between my legs and thrust quickly into me again.  He dipped his head to my breast and suckled at my nipples, moving from one to the other, his hot breath making me shiver as the tugging sensation of his tongue flicking at the intensely sensitive tips pushed me further toward climax - when I felt his teeth scrape over me I couldn't hold back, something in me snapped and I was gone.

I'm not sure, really, who was in control of me in that moment.  But I do know that my legs went up around his back and I thrust up against him hard, as hard as he was thrusting down, my hands tangling in his hair and pulling him down onto me so that our bodies were tight against each other when it hit me.  And it hit hard...I'd never felt anything like it, not even close.  My body just completely gave itself over to it, moving without my permission, acting and reacting entirely on its own.  And when it was over, I was out of breath and shaking, falling to a boneless softly shuddering mass of nothing but jangling nerves and a slowly abating heat that pulsed from _everywhere,_ not just between my legs.

King waited until I'd calmed a little before thrusting himself to orgasm again as I panted and moaned, my eyes flying open in shock at the sound of my own voice melting together with his as he collapsed on top of me.  His scratchy chin made me grimace as he rubbed his face down my throat, my overstimulated nervous system quietly rebelling against the intense sensation of his warm lips biting and sucking at my skin, working their way slowly down to my shoulder and then back up as his hot breath conjured goosebumps on my damp flesh.  I held onto his shoulders, staring up at our shadows dancing in the firelight on the ceiling above us, and when my ability to form coherent thoughts returned there was just one question forming in the misty fog of those shadows.

I wondered, again, if he would kiss me.

Because even though he'd been inside me four times now, his lips had yet to come anywhere near mine.

But I didn't dwell on it for too long...those lips that I wished I could taste were latching onto my nipple again, tugging and sucking at it, pulling a deep groan from me as they stoked the simmering arousal in my belly like the smoldering coals in the hearth.  His fingers played teasingly with the other one and I pushed up against him, grinding my hips on his, trying to get closer, the renewed tension in my stomach sending a heated wetness between my legs that I could feel trickling slowly out of me.  I needed him again...it wasn't just a want, it was a genuine _need,_ a twisting, painful sort of desire that made me throb, clenching muscles that had been unused for far too long, bringing everything back to a roaring life that pulsed and wept and made me cry out something unintelligible into the half dark of the little room.  It had hurt when he took me in the barn, and again at the table, but the third and fourth times he'd slipped into me easily and I suddenly realized what the difference was.

I wanted him.

I thought I had before, but I'd only truly wanted the _idea_ of him, to have his attention without his scowl, his words without his snarl.  And once the scowl had softened into bliss and the snarl had quieted to a murmur, my body had accepted him without resistance, allowing me to prepare for him, letting me soften and swell and become sensitive to his touch.  He seemed to sense it, his own body reacting with a softer friction, less bruising grip and more sensual caress, his mouth no longer biting so much as nibbling, his fingers teasing more than pinching.  The sensory storm of his rough touch calmed to something more tender, not gentle but no longer violent, though no less urgent and needy.

The idea of him had become reality.

What happened in the barn between us had been a frustrated climax of mounting tension, misguided hostility, and denial.  I couldn't blame him for that.  I'd felt it too, the need to tear into him, to feel brutalized by him, to be taken by this man who had been haunting and taunting me for days.  To receive the validation of knowing _he did want me,_ that I wasn't just entertaining a schoolgirl crush on a man who would never look twice in my direction.  He'd finally given that to me, and I buried my face in his thick black hair to hide the smile I felt tugging at my lips.

He pulled his head up and looked at me, and for the first time since I'd met him, there was no anger in his face, no annoyance, no aggravation at having to deal with me, no darkly furrowed brow or threatening scowl.  He stared into my eyes for a long time, the first real eye contact we'd ever made that didn't involve unspoken threats.  I stared back, not sure what else to do.  I could feel him stiffening between my legs again, his heavy cock pressing against me where I was both achingly sore and desperately wanting to be touched more, and as his eyes darkened with that growing need for relief I watched them drop slowly to my mouth.

 _He won't kiss me,_ I told myself. _It's too intimate._  He could fuck me because sex was a primal need, a built in drive, something he couldn't stop if he wanted to.  But putting his mouth on mine was far too personal, it required a conscious decision and brought us irrevocably into each other's space in a way that joining our bodies didn't even come close to.

I understood that.

But it didn't stop me wanting it.

And as his eyes drifted shut as my legs came up around his hips to open for him again and his hands slipped under my bottom to lift me to meet his thrust, I knew one thing for certain.

I could wait.

 

 

_To be continued..._


	7. Chapter 7

  

 

 

 **Cha tèid nì sam bith san dòrn dùinte.**  
Nothing can get into a closed fist. 

 

 

I don't know what time it was when I woke that morning - there were no clocks in the cabin that I could see, and my watch had called it quits the day I met King in the rainstorm, which seemed oddly appropriate somehow.  Time had stopped for me at some point during my first trek down the mountain behind the man whose bed I was now sleeping in.  And to be quite honest, I wasn't even sure what day it was anymore.  All I knew for certain was that the sun had gone down and come back up twice since the snow started, and that the surly shepherd and I were wrapped up in each other's arms at this very moment, his chest rising and falling against my back as he breathed quietly behind me.

I was warm and comfortable and more content than I'd been in so long...but I needed desperately to pee, and slipping unnoticed out of his tight embrace wasn't something I could see happening.  Every time I moved his arms tightened around me, and if I wriggled too much he woke up just enough to growl at me to be still.

Finally unable to hold it any longer, I shoved my elbow into his ribs and waited for him to open his eyes.

"Let me up."

His eyes didn't open, but he grunted in a distinctly unfriendly manner as his right arm squeezed me tighter back against him.

"What for."

"I need to pee.  Let me up, I mean it."

"If I say no?"

I squirmed around, trying to get out of his grip and failing, but upsetting my bladder just enough to make my plight that much more urgent.  "What do you mean if you say no?  What kind of sadistic creep are you?"

There was an unsettlingly hostile sort of silence between us before he finally loosened his hold and slid his hand down to my ribcage.   _"This kind."_ His fingers dug in viciously and before I realized it he was tickling me, without mercy and without humor - his obvious intent was to make me piss myself, and I was perilously close to doing just that.

"Stop it you jerk!!"

I struggled against him until he gave me a hard push and I crashed to the floor next to the bed;  it was like falling on ice and I screeched, yanking at the blankets to pull myself to my feet.  He tugged them away and held them bunched up against his chest, propped up on one elbow watching me with a cruel smirk on his face as I ran to get my coat from the chair.

"You're an ass!"

He rolled over onto his back and pulled the blankets up to his neck, closing his eyes, completely disinterested in my protest.  "And you're far too noisy first thing in the morning."

"You pushed me out of bed!"

"I'll push you out of more than the bed if you don't shut it off."

"Why are you so mean?!"

He was quiet for a few seconds and I was just about to add something else when he put his hands over his face and gave it a hard rub.  "Do you _ever_ shut up?"

"It's freezing!  You don't even care, do you?  Is this how you treat everyone that gets in your bed?  You do your business and then shove them out on the floor the next morning?  Because if that's how you romance a woman then I can understand why you live way the hell up here all by yourself and nobody comes up here except idiots like me who don't know any better!" 

"Okay that's it." 

Before I realized what was happening he had climbed out of bed and grabbed me by the back of my neck and was shoving me toward the door.  I tugged at his hand to get it off me but he was far too strong and I was far too off balance;  he opened the door and shoved me out, slamming it soundly behind me as I fell gracelessly into the snow, naked and gasping in shock when I realized he'd yanked my coat out of my hands before he shut the door.

"King you fucker!!"

I could hear him laughing from inside the cabin and hurled myself at the door, kicking as hard as I could, remembering that a couple of solid blows would pop it open.  But he was either leaning against it or had moved something in front of it, and it took all of about ten seconds for my feet to be so cold and numb from the snow that I couldn't kick anymore without it feeling like they were going to snap off at the ankles.

"King!  I'm going to freeze out here!"

"You said you needed a piss.  Lavy's to the north, if you stay to the path you might find it."

"What?!"

There was no answer from the other side of the door, so I banged on it again.  "I can't even see out here!  And I have no idea which way is north...please open the door - "

There wasn't even time enough for me to finish begging before he opened it and shoved my coat out at me.  I grabbed it and was tugging it on frantically when he threw my boots over my head;  they buried themselves in the deep snow about five feet past me and I scrambled for them.  "King please, let me back in!"

But the door was shut again, and despite the aching chill that reached all the way to my bones, I really did need to pee.

"Fuck."

I squinted into the storm, so bitterly cold and stiff that I could barely move, but I was going to be damned before I'd stand there and pee down my own legs because of that man.  I could see what was left of the path he'd shoveled the day before, though it was mostly filled up with snow again - but at least it was enough of a guide to get me to the damn outhouse.  As I trudged off in the direction that I could only assume was north, I started having serious doubts about surviving this blizzard...not because of the storm, but because of the bad tempered asshole whose mercy I was stuck at.

 

 

He let me back in when I returned, stepping aside to let me rush past him to the fireplace, shivering violently and sobbing with the aching cold that had numbed literally every exposed surface I had - which was a lot of me, since all I had on was my coat and boots.  I couldn't feel anything except the stinging pinpricks of my nerve endings coming back online and stood there crying as he stripped me out of them and sat me down in the chair to rub my legs.  I was so mad at him I couldn't even articulate my anger, but his big hands were warm and he rubbed me briskly to bring the feeling back to my feet and fingers, so I stopped sputtering and just let him do it.   _No sense in fighting a pair of warm hands._

"Thank you," I finally mumbled, swallowing my pride just enough to choke the words out.  "Although I don't know why I should have to be grateful since it was you - "

I didn't even get to finish my sentence before he dragged me out of the chair and herded me off to the door again, yanking it open and shoving me back out into the snow.  I stumbled and fell face down into one of the deep drifts to the side of the pathway as he slammed the door behind me.

I think I must have screamed, but my mouth was full of snow again and my barely thawed limbs were instantly frozen for the second time in barely five minutes.  The icy shock felt like death and I scrambled back to the door on my hands and knees, too cold to even stand up.

"KING!!!"

The door opened and he grabbed me by the arm, dragging me in and yanking me to my feet.

"Behave your damn self or out you go again, are we clear?"  I was nodding frantically as he shoved me toward the fireplace again.  "If you think I won't let your yappy arse freeze to death out there you're sorely mistaken."

I just nodded, shaking so hard my bones felt like they were going to shatter.  He grabbed the blanket from the bed and wrapped it around me, rubbing up and down my back and front roughly with his hands, then he moved me close to the fire and pulled the blanket open so that my front side was exposed to the direct heat.  After a few seconds he turned me around and warmed my back.

"Stay there till you're warm but don't fall asleep," he ordered me, moving over to the bed to get dressed.  "It's easy to get drowsy after warming and you'll end up setting fire to the whole damn place."

I watched him pulling on a pair of thick knitted leggings under his kilt and started to say something, but bit it back - one crack about him not being tough enough to take the cold without wrapping his bits and I'd be back out in it myself.  So I nodded when he looked at me, and kept my mouth shut as he tugged his coat and boots on and headed out into the storm to do god only knew what.

 

 

I cleaned up and got dressed myself while he was gone;  it took a little while to finally get the chill off, but he was right, I was starting to feel a bit drowsy, so I went to the kitchen area to get a bowl of water from the crotchety sink and warmed it on the coals.  I was feeling just a little bit proud of myself, being all self sufficient and pioneer-womanish, heating water on an open fire and not burning the house down or injuring myself.  But there was no way in hell I wanted to live in a place like this even if I _could_ somehow cope with the lack of basic human luxuries, so I wiped off my stupid grin and washed up with what I could only guess was his dish rag.  It wasn't much to work with, but I felt better once I'd sponged off and cleaned between my legs.  The bed was in worse shape than I was, but I couldn't begin to know what to do about it, so I just pulled the blanket up over the damp spot and pretended like I wasn't ignoring a puddle I was most likely going to have to sleep in later.  I couldn't remember King washing up before he got dressed and it made me feel warm in my stomach, thinking he could smell me on him...unless he was in the barn, in which case all he'd be smelling right about now was a few dozen sheep and a couple of furry cows.

The warm feeling faded at the thought, but even the memory of the smelly barn did nothing to calm the quivery little sensation of excitement I felt when I remembered him making love to me the night before.  I rethought my choice of terms for just a moment, trying to replace _making love_ with something else that suited his personality better, but the more I thought about it the more I realized there wasn't anything more suitable.  For though he might be a caveman in most other respects, once he had me naked underneath him, the jagged edge instantly smoothed down and those rough, calloused hands turned tender.  It was like being in bed with a different man, and I remembered opening my eyes to stare at him, thinking I must have fallen asleep in front of the fire and was dreaming the whole thing.  But it was him, and it was real, and by the flickering firelight the shadows dancing across the ceiling above us almost - _almost_ \- looked like black wings sprouting from his shoulders.

 _Sgaile leannan,_ I'd read in one of the books by the chair, an anthology of highland myths and dark fairytales that had caught my eye.   _Demon lover._

I'd reached my hands around his back to feel for the inky black feathers, but all I felt was his warm skin.

 

 

When King came back in later, red-cheeked and windblown with snow in his hair and looking every inch an untamed Scottish warrior returning from battle, I was sitting in his chair reading one of his tattered books and finishing a bowl of stew I'd found in his icebox.  He glared at me and stomped past me to thaw himself at the fire.

"I've never seen a refrigerator that actually uses ice to keep stuff cold," I said, scooting the chair over a few inches to make room for him.  "You don't have electricity up here at all?"

He didn't answer, just crouched on the hearth rubbing his hands together.

"I heated you some stew, I didn't know when you'd be coming back so I went ahead and ate."  I got up and moved around him, scooting in to pick his bowl out of the coals using one of my gloves as a potholder. When I held it out to him he looked at me, something I could only describe as annoyed disbelief registering in his expression.  It confused me and I wondered briefly if I'd done something wrong, transgressed on some unspoken ancient rule of propriety that as an outsider I had no knowledge of.   _Oh shit, I cooked him lunch, does that mean we're married or something?_

He reached out and took the bowl, sitting back against the chair so he could stretch his legs out and put his boots right into the coals.  I could smell the rubber soles getting hot but he didn't seem to care, just started eating, emptying the bowl in about two minutes and handing it back to me.  I don't know why I kept trying to engage him in conversation, but something about his stoic silence just flipped my switch and I couldn't stop myself.

"Hungry, huh?"

He didn't respond, but finally reached down and slapped one of his smoking boot soles before pulling them off.  I stood to take the empty bowls to the sink and yelped a little in surprise when he reached up and grabbed my wrist, yanking me to a stop.  There wasn't a single word spoken as he pulled me to the floor with him and climbed on top of me, making quick work of my blue jeans with hands that I briefly wondered if he'd washed.  But there wasn't a lot of time to worry about hygiene as he shoved them down my legs and nudged one knee up to separate my thighs.

"King...come on, you just came from the barn..."

He made a little growling sound but didn't respond.  I was getting used to his caveman manners, but his preferences still surprised me - he tugged my panties down just a few inches, just far enough to get up in between my legs, and I remembered the night before when he'd pulled them back up far enough so that they rubbed against him.  It was kind of uncomfortable so I reached down to take them off, but he grunted and slapped my hand away. _"Leave 'em."_

"Could you...maybe..."  My hand was still between us so I gripped him tentatively.  He was so damn _big,_ thick and broad, that it made me gasp and I had to concentrate to remember what I was going to say.  His bare skin was warm and undeniably naked in my hand...I wasn't sure how he would take to my next question, but I had to ask it anyway.  "Don't you have any condoms?  I really don't want to get pregnant you know - "

"Then don't get in my bed."

I stared at him, caught somewhere between angry and shocked at his archaic attitude.  I was on the Depo shot but that still didn't absolve him of all responsibility - and he didn't know it, anyway.  He started to nudge into me and I suddenly felt righteously indignant and just blurted out the first thing that came into my head.  "I guess it was all those other womens' responsibility too and they just weren't on the ball?"

His eyes went dark but he didn't say anything.  And like always, when he went silent it activated my overwhelming need to keep talking.  "Maybe if you curbed your reproductive services a little bit you wouldn't be the sire of the new Scottish monarchy - or I dunno, maybe if you just put a damn rubber on it every now and then."

The dark look on his face turned into an alarming amalgamation of anger and smug derision and I _knew_ I was in trouble.

"How many men have you been fucked by?"

"What?"

"You heard me."  He was still on top of me, still pushing down on me, his hard cock still nudged up against my folds, but the look on his face didn't even remotely fit the situation.  "Or maybe you didn't, over the sound of your own harpy voice."

I stammered a little, taken off guard by the question.  "I've had...one...serious boyfriend."

"Yeah?  And where's he?"

"We broke up."

"No surprise.  He obviously couldn't get it up while you were talking."

I pushed against him and struggled, making it clear I wanted him to get off me, and to my surprise he sat up beside my knees and allowed me to pull my jeans back up.

"He had no problem with that!"

The angry, smug look turned into a mocking smirk and he shook his head.  "Bullshite."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you were just about one step removed from virginity when you spread your legs in my barn and for all I know you got that far with your own fingers."

"What??  I've had sex before, you weren't my first."

He gave me a sideways look of absolute disbelief mixed with a sarcastic grin that made my hands tremble.  He was shaking his head and starting to laugh, and it made me angry. 

"Lettin' a bloke fumble around between your legs doesn't make you experienced."

"You know what? _Fuck you King."_  I stood up, hastily pulling my pants the rest of the way up, and stomped furiously over to the door;  I yanked on it, but it was iced shut and he started to laugh, loudly this time.  My temper was rising and I gave it a hard kick, heard the ice crack, and finally managed to pull it open - but by then my dramatic exit was ruined and he was sitting in his chair by the fire, watching my silly scene with immense enjoyment.  But he didn't try to stop me, so I grabbed my coat and boots and started yanking them on.  This would be my third time into the blizzard, but at that point I was willing to risk freezing to death on the mountain rather than stay in the cabin with him for another minute.

"You're letting the snow in."

"Shut up, I'm putting my boots on."

"If you were truly determined to leave you'd march out into the storm without 'em to make your point more dramatic."

"Fuck you, I've already been out there barefooted twice.  You're not worth dying for."

"You're repeating yourself now."

_"Shut up!"_

"Shut the damn door!"

I'd had enough - I turned around and threw my other boot at him.  He ducked it, glancing behind him where it landed, then looked at me again with the most infuriatingly smug grin I've ever seen in my life.  I've never _ever_ wanted to simultaneously kill a man and jump his bones at the same time...until that moment.  And in that long, furious few seconds while I stood glaring at him and he sat smirking at me, I had what I can only call a deranged sexual awakening of sorts.  Nothing could have stopped me from doing what I did next, and to this day I still feel weirdly shocked that it happened.

I slammed the door shut, ripped my coat off and threw it on the floor, and marched over to where he sat, his eyes still locked to mine, that smirk still firmly on his lips.  I think I had it in my head to punch him in the mouth, but I'd never hit anyone in my life and I had no idea how to do it.  So instead I straddled his lap and stood there glaring down at him, daring him to touch me as I grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head back.

What shocked me the most was that he let me do it.

"There is _nothing_ about you that I like, King McClary," I said in a low, controlled, oddly unemotional voice.  It didn't sound like me and for a second I didn't really believe it was.  "You're not even my type, my boyfriend was a big blue eyed blonde and _he_ actually knew how to hold a conversation and behave like a civilized human being, not some scurvy wild animal that would rather piss on you than say hello."

His hands came to my waist and dug into the soft part above my hipbones.  His eyes never left mine, that smug little grin burning into me like fire.

"Then why are you riding my dick?"

"Because it's here and I'm here and there's nothing better to do in this shack than have sex and insult each other...and I'm tired of the insults."

As I lowered myself onto his lap and started grinding on the hardening bulge under my saddle, his strong hands gripped my shoulders and pulled me up close against him.  I felt his warm lips on that sensitive spot between my collarbone and the base of my throat and dropped my head back, giving him room to work.  His voice was a low, raspy growl as he whispered, "That is the _only_ thing you've ever said worth listening to."

 

 

_To be continued..._

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

 

 

  **Bàthaidh uisge teth teine.**  
Hot water will quench fire.

 

His eyes were still burning into mine with that half amused, half angry look that he seemed to have patented when I noticed his fingers had loosened their deathgrip on my waist and were sliding downward.  He hooked them into the waistband of my jeans and gave them a hard pull, yanking me toward him, and when his chin bumped against my stomach I felt something give way somewhere in the general vicinity of where I kept my inhibitions and my libido.  What they were doing in the same carefully locked box was a mystery, but I felt the inhibitions go out the window while the libido spilled over, splashing everywhere, soaking me - quite literally - with a needy sort of desire that made me grind against his face.  He seemed to be all for that and I felt his breathing quicken against that exposed bit of stomach below my bellybutton as his rough whiskers scratched deliciously against my skin.

He made a hungry little grunting sound as his teeth tugged at the top of my jeans, pulling the button open as he yanked me down onto his lap and laid me back on his thighs.  In just moments my zipper was open and he had spread the fly open, tonguing my bellybutton and dragging his lips down my stomach as far as he could reach;  the top of my underwear was exposed and he bit it, pulling the lace away from my skin and sending a violent shiver through me.

"Get up, get out of these fucking clothes."

I was going to protest about his tone, just for the hell of irritating him, but he jerked me up into a sitting position and lifted me by my waist up off of his lap.  He wasn't being gentle and his fingers digging into my sides were painful, so I obeyed and stood up in front of him, complaining angrily as he turned me around roughly and yanked my jeans down.

"Hey!"

There was a resounding slap to my ass and a hissingly snarled _"Be quiet"_ as he yanked me back down onto his lap, this time with my back to his chest.  I could feel his hand between my bottom and his stomach, tugging the front of his kilt down to pull his cock out as I shrugged out of my shirt and bra...and then I felt it against my back, rubbing, and in a fuzzy moment of hazy half clarity I realized what he was doing.

He was rubbing himself against my panties.

This was no less than the third time - fourth if I counted the day I caught him masturbating - that he'd shown a solid kink for ladies' undies.  I didn't know if it was mine specifically or if this was just a _thing_ with him, but it was undoubtedly an incredible turn on and I sat there, quiet and obedient, letting him move me the way he wanted.  It felt good even though he wasn't anywhere near my most sensitive bits, and the little grunting sounds he was making were causing my stomach to clench up.  I felt him slip his cock under the lace, rubbing directly on my bare lower back while the fabric rubbed over the top of his shaft.

After a little while I realized I was pushing back on him, helping him.  His crushing grip on my hips had loosened and he was running his hands up and down my sides, bringing them up far enough to cup my breasts, stroking his thumbs across my nipples before sliding back down again.  And his lips were against my back, brushing hotly over my spine, making me think for a brief moment that he was kissing me - but when I felt his teeth nipping at my skin I felt a little downrush of disappointment.  Why it seemed so important to have this man kiss me was beyond my scope of comprehension, but after all the sex we'd indulged in, all the intimate sharing of bodies and giving and receiving of pleasure, it seemed like it should just happen.  But there was something about him that wouldn't allow it, and for the life of me I couldn't begin to imagine what it was.  I wasn't even sure if he would be a _good_ kisser, to be honest.  He had scratchy whiskers that were rapidly turning into the beginnings of a beard, and his mouth was always tightened into the grim line of either a smirk or a scowl.  And his personality, with the exception of when he was in bed with me, was less than sweet.

_This is enough_ , I told myself as his warm hands trailed almost gently up and down my ribs.   _This can be enough.  I can live with this because it is sooo damn good, and that's all I want from him.  I don't need his feelings.  I don't need his care.  All I need is this._

I didn't believe it, but I told myself that anyway.  And as I pushed back against him, groaning with a miserable need brought on by his rough hands playing with my breasts while he stroked himself against my bottom, I was just almost able to convince myself of the lie.

 

There was a sudden catch to his breathing and I knew he was going to come quickly;  I was aware of his little tells now, the signs that gave him away, that alerted me to the stages his body was at during copulation.  He lifted me by the waist and lowered me down onto his cock, sliding far up into me till I grabbed his knees and made him stop.  He was far too big for me to take this much of him in this position, with my weight pushing me down onto him and his strong hands pulling at my hips;  when I cried out a little he stopped and ran a hand up my back to quiet me.  He was starting to slip back into that different King already, the one that put his hands on me with a firm but oddly gentle touch, the one whose stoic scowl softened, whose normally furrowed eyebrows went up at the center as he looked into my eyes before closing his own.

Who the hell was _that?_

It wasn't the guy whose hair I'd grabbed and whose lap I had done a little grind on, just minutes ago.  It definitely wasn't the guy who had shoved me face first out of the cabin into the blizzard - twice.  And it sure as hell wasn't the guy who'd assaulted me in the barn after calling me nasty names.

This was a different guy altogether.

This guy made soft little sounds under his breath when I pushed down on him, closed his eyes tight on the downthrust, ran his fingertips lovingly over the lace trim on my underwear while chewing on my shoulder.  His touch went from rough and uncaring to gentle and attentive without warning and veered back and forth between the two till it settled somewhere in between.  And even if it took me far longer than him to reach release, he didn't stop until I was there, gasping and moaning and trembling from the intensity of his attentions while he nuzzled my cheek.

No, this definitely wasn't the same guy that pissed on my penetrometer.

My demon lover was only a demon when he wasn't inside me.  That was why I couldn't feel his wings - the only time I was allowed to touch him was when we were having sex.

"King - "

_"Shhhhh..."_

His hand came down from where it had been rubbing at my nipple and buried itself between my thighs, one finger pushing almost roughly into me, stretching me painfully;  with his cock already in me I had barely enough elasticity left for it to fit, but the pain was oddly, erotically, frantically _exhilarating._  When I gasped and ground down on his hand, I felt his cock twitch hard and he came, a strangled sort of groan muffled into the middle of my back as he pushed his face hard against me.  His stomach was heaving and I leaned back on his chest, letting my head fall onto his shoulder while he rubbed me with one hand, pulling the other out from between my legs and sliding it back up to my breast where he used the wetness from inside me to slide his fingers slickly over my nipple.

_"Come for me, Molly."_

It was the first time he'd said my name since the day we met, and hearing it in that tone of voice, raspy and gravelly and breathless as he came down from his orgasm, was the single most erotic thing I'd ever heard in my life.  I don't even know how many more seconds I held out, because it was like my switch flipped and triggered the whole thing, a complete meltdown of pleasureful sensations that blinded me to absolutely everything else in the world.  I didn't care that I was stuck in a shack on some godforsaken hill in Scotland in the middle of a blizzard.  I didn't care that I had nothing with me except what was in my purse and that I was in the same panties I'd put on three days ago, or that they were sticky and wet _again._  I didn't care that I wasn't getting to wash up sufficiently or that every time I had to pee it meant trekking through a whiteout to a primitive cobblestone shithouse behind a barn with no lights.  I didn't even care that the man fucking me hadn't bathed the entire time I'd been there.

All I cared about was the white hot explosion in my stomach and my own name in my ears, and those scratchy black whiskers scraping against my cheek as he whispered something I couldn't understand.

 

 

_To be continued..._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Artwork by the incredible vivianstark.tumblr.com*


	9. Chapter 9

 

 

 

 **Cha bhi fios aire math an tobair gus an tràigh e.**  
The value of the well is not known until it goes dry.

 

 

 

"What's this?"

I moved my head off King's arm to look down;  he was touching my pendant with his fingertip and picked it up, turning the little glass globe in his fingers.

"Dandelion.  Or, the little frond thingies anyway."  His eyes were intent on the tiny white gossamer tufts encased in the glass.  "You know, the little bits that blow away."

"What's it for?"

"I dunno.  Does it have to be for anything other than just being pretty?"

He finally drew his eyes away and looked at me.  "It's a weed.  How is it pretty?"

I pulled the chain so that the pendent fell out of his hand, settling again in the hollow between my breasts.  "It _is_ pretty.  And you're supposed to make wishes on it, or something."  He was staring at me and I squirmed a little, uncomfortable under his heavy gaze.  "I don't know, I just like it!"

He chuckled a bit and laid his head back down next to mine.  I knew he loved to fluster me, and in his favor I did fluster easily.  At some point during the night he'd stopped being an asshole to me though and started acting human, handling me tenderly, looking me in the eye, nuzzling close to my mouth - though he still didn't kiss me.  I'd given up hoping that he would and just enjoyed everything else, and once that expectation was gone I realized that my inhibitions - what were left of them - vanished entirely.  With the possibility of that particular intimacy off the table along with all of the romantic trappings it brought with it, a feeling of _freedom,_ a primal _urgency_  overtook me...and I found myself doing things I would never have imagined.

Things that just weren't like me.

Things I'd never done before.

Things that felt wild and good and _sensual._ Things that hurt and that made me scream from both pleasure and pain and things that brought mangled cursing shouts from _him_ that nearly drowned out my own.  Things that made my cheeks feel hot now that I was thinking of them in the light of day, without the blanket to hide my face under.  I knew I had hurt him more than once and that he had let me, and in return I had begged him to hurt me back.  His chest was marked with angry red scratches that were just beginning to fade till they almost matched the broad pink handprints on my thighs and I could still feel the burn of harsh slap marks on my ass.  And I'd pulled his hair so hard that he had hissed like an animal, grabbing my other hand and pushing it against the back of his head to make me do it again.  The moans coming from him were so obscene I felt myself blushing, but the only thing in the world that I cared about at that moment was making him do it more.

And as I licked and bit and scratched and cursed and lost every last vestige of shyness and decency I'd ever held onto, King had grinned wickedly, his eyes alight with something both ominously dark and shockingly bright.

If I'd been just one step away from virginity when he'd taken me in the barn, I was now so far removed from it that I couldn't remember ever not having him inside me.

 

 

He stood at the sink banging on the pipe with his boot till it sputtered and clanked and finally spit chunks of ice into the basin, followed by water so cold that the metal bowl made a heavy popping sound from the abrupt temperature change.  He filled it and went to the fireplace to set it in the coals as I watched, feeling oddly content now that we seemed to have ourselves an understanding.  He was what he was and I'd finally accepted it, and knowing that I didn't expect more from him appeared to put him more at ease with my presence.  I knew it had to be hard on him, being stuck with me and my incessant need to talk when he was so used to living alone with the eerie quiet of the mountain.  I wondered how long he could go without human contact, hearing nothing but the bleating of the sheep and the howling of the wind, before he started to long for the sound of another voice.  Glenda had said weeks often went by without anyone laying eyes on him in the village.

"Do you get lonely up here by yourself?"

He dipped a finger into the bowl, checking the water's temperature before he turned and gave me a sideways look.

"Why would I get lonely?"

"Oh I dunno - maybe because there are no people around?"

"You seem to be suffering under the mistaken assumption that I require human interaction."  I raised an eyebrow at him, about to make some smart remark about him suddenly learning english when he shook his head and stood, stretching briefly before settling into his chair in front of the fire.  "What I see of other people is enough.  I don't need more."  His eyes were on a stack of books and I realized he must be one of those introverts who could live quite happily inside their own heads.  I wondered what that must be like, being content with reading about other people instead of actually associating with them.  I was sort of a social creature, I needed other voices to interact with my own.

I looked around, suddenly remembering the dog bowl under his bed and the comment he'd made about it.

"Why haven't you gotten another dog?"

He rubbed his face with one hand, then shrugged, just barely.  "Haven't had the time."  There was something unhappy in the inflection of this voice and in the way he left his hand over his eyes for a long while before getting up to check the water again.  It was steaming and he brought it to the table, setting it in front of me.  "There's your bath, lass."

I really wanted to ask him more about the dog and find out why he seemed upset about it, but he pulled his boots on and grabbed his coat as he headed for the door.

 

 

I sat there for a while, comfortable in his big bulky knitted sweater with the blanket wrapped around me and my boots on, dreading getting uncovered to wash up, but it was now to the point where I could catch the scent of his sweat on my own skin and - even worse - the smell of what we'd been doing.  But the cabin was comfortably warm for the most part, and my bowl of water was about to start cooling down.  He'd left me a clean cloth to wash with and I finally resigned myself to stripping, tugging the huge scratchy sweater off over my head and shivering as my skin instantly puckered from the cold as I grabbed my bowl and moved to the fireplace where it was decidedly warmer.

I was standing there completely naked except for my boots when King came back in, slamming the door behind him and cursing the cold.  His skin had a bluish tinge and his hair was wet;  he'd washed up outside in the icy open-air shower.

 _His dick should be in his throat for at least a day after that_ I thought to myself as I watched him strip out of his coat and boots - but once the coat was gone I could see that I was mistaken.  His skin might be broken out violently in gooseflesh and his teeth chattering, but that godly cock was gloriously unaffected by any of it.  I felt my cheeks go hot and his eyes fell straight to my naked crotch.

"You're slow.  Am I going to have to do it for you?"

"What?"

I don't guess it took him two strides and maybe three seconds to cross the little room and grab me, roughly moving me closer to the fire as I frantically crossed my arms over my chest and yelped at the touch of his cold hands on my bare skin.  I don't know why I felt the sudden need to cover myself - maybe it was the look of the predator in his eyes when he'd first come in, but it felt ridiculous in the light of what we'd spent all night and most of the morning doing.  He shook his head a little bit disbelievingly as he put me where he wanted me and pulled the chair up close, sitting down and wedging the bowl of water between his knees.

"You're about useless, aren't you?"  There was a soft edge to the rude words and I knew he was baiting me.  His terms of endearment left a lot to be desired, but I was finally beginning to figure out that his definition of affectionate teasing ran a bit contrary to most people's.

"No, I can do things.  You're just impatient."

"Oh yeah?"  He looked up at me, squeezing water out of the cloth and starting to rub me clean.  "Tell me what you can do."

The feel of his hand on my hip as the other ran the warm cloth over my stomach was intensely distracting and I stammered a bit, trying to think of an answer that he would understand.  I could do all kinds of things that related to my job, but I knew none of them would mean anything to him.  I could navigate a city without getting lost, which was a big thing where I was from, but I doubted it would register as anything impressive to him.  I was very good at baking and there wasn't a piece of post-1920's Fiesta that I couldn't identify.  But he wasn't going to care about any of that and I suddenly felt like I'd never be more to him than that word.   _Useless._

But he'd found a use for me, and though I knew I wasn't indispensable or unique by any means, right at this moment I was important to him.  I had something he wanted.

"I can make you moan."

One eyebrow shot up and he looked thoughtful for a moment as he washed down my legs with the warm water.

"Aye, but that's hardly a skill that's difficult to come by."

"Oh I'm sure."  Scooting closer, I spread my legs a little and let him wash between them.  He took his time, gentling his touch significantly as he pushed the rag up under me.  It felt so damn good, the warm water and the scratchy cloth and his hand, all rubbing against my most sensitive bits, and when I looked down and saw him looking up at me with just a hint of a grin, I knew finishing this cleanup was about to become a pointless endeavor.  He was just going to dirty me up again, I could see it in his eyes, feel it in the way his fingers started to push up into me, the way his thumb pressed into my clit and stroked as his mouth found its way to where the now-dropped cloth had been.  His warm tongue snaked up between the soft flesh that hid my opening from him, finding it easily as his hands slid up to my hips and tugged me closer between his legs.

The water bowl crashed to the floor, splashing rapidly cooling water all over his bare feet and my boots, running down between the unsealed hardwood planks and hissing as it dripped onto the snow beneath them.

And as he pulled me closer, grinding my crotch against his face, his long fingers digging into my hips, I knew he didn't think I was useless at all - but he would keep pretending he did, because people skills were _my_ thing, not his...and forming personal attachments wasn't on the long impressive list of things he could do.

 

 

I guess it must have been mid afternoon by the time we stopped again.  The sun had begun to break through the clouds, sending a warm light through the window over the bed.  King was laying beside me on his back, lazily spinning my underwear around on his finger, stopping every now and then to touch them to his lips;  I just watched, fascinated, not saying anything.  I'd never seen a man do something like that before, though admittedly my intimate experience with men was limited and so far as I knew nobody had ever stolen my underwear except him.  The last time we'd made love he had tucked them between us so that they rubbed against his lower stomach, and the feeling of the satin and lace had seemed to intensify his arousal to something close to a fever pitch.  It was interesting...and more than just a little bit of a turn on, watching him.

"You have a tactile fetish, don't you?"

He stopped playing with them and let them fall onto his chest, yawning as he turned over onto his side facing me.  "A what?"

"Tactile, you know, touch.  Texture, sensory experience."

He was looking at me like I was talking too much again, that mildly threatening lowering of one eyebrow that said he'd heard enough nonsense for now.  But there was a little smile behind it, not a smirk or sarcastic grin, and despite how much I would have loved to find out where his obsession with my panties was rooted, something made me drop it.  Maybe it was the soft way he was suddenly looking at me, like he was pleasantly amused instead of annoyed this time.  His eyes fell to my chest and he reached down to pick up my dandelion pendant.

"You make wishes on it?"

"Yeah, I guess.  I just think it's pretty.  Even though it's a weed."

He seemed to be deep in thought for a long moment and I just watched him, realizing for maybe the first time that he wasn't just handsome - he was _beautiful_ in a wild, dangerous sort of way, like what I would imagine Catherine's Heathcliff might look like.  Untamed and unruly and completely unaffected by other people's expectations.  He was what he was, and that was all he aspired to be.  And in the half light coming through the window above us, there was a skewered sort of perfection to him that I couldn't begin to understand.  His hair was black, so dark and inky it barely reflected any light, but it was soft despite being uncombed and uncared for.  He was muscular but slight, tall and straight, his skin painted with tattoos and more than a few scars that looked to have been acquired under interesting circumstances that I would have loved to hear about, if I'd thought for one moment that he would deign to tell me the stories behind them.

But his face - that was where the real story was hidden, behind all the confusing contradictions.  His eyes were large and soft, but on first glance seemed cruel and angry.  But they could change so quickly, and the tenderness I'd seen in them when he was caring for the little lamb was startlingly similar to the gentleness that seeped into them when he was inside me, urging me to come.  His lips were a grim, tight line that looked like it wasn't capable of smiling until suddenly it did, and that smile was brilliant and warm and genuine, though usually fleeting.  He had expressive eyebrows, but they were almost always expressing either anger or annoyance or a combination of the two, though I wasn't sure whether to trust them anymore since I'd seen them hide so many of those fleeting smiles.

He was a mess of confusing half truths that constantly told lies about each other.  And as he climbed over me to dress in front of the fire before heading out to check on the sheep, I decided I didn't need to sort him out.  I wasn't going to be here long enough for the effort to be worth it.  He stopped at the door and looked over at me, tugging his coat up around his neck, that beautifully deceitful face still soft with the pleasure we'd been taking from each other all day.

"What do you wish for, Molly?"

"What?"

"Your necklace.  You said it's for wishes."

"Oh...yeah."  I picked up the little glass globe and looked at it.  I couldn't remember ever actually having made a wish on it.  "I dunno.  I'd have to think about it."

 

I stood up on the bed to look out the window as he left the cabin;  the snow had finally slowed and I could see the barn for the first time in days.  The flakes coming down now were fat and fluffy and they drifted slowly, like a cheesily romantic Hallmark winter special where the heroine turns her face up to the sky and smiles beatifically as the gentle snowflakes prettily dot her face.  But I knew if I went out and tried it, Scotland would hurl something at me that knocked me flat on my ass in the mud.  And King would laugh and shake his head, mentally adding another tally mark to the "useless" column under my name.

The little pendant was still in my hand and I twirled it on its chain, looking from it to King as he tromped through the deep snow out to the barn.  I really had no idea what I would wish for, if I were inclined to believe in such things.

But I imagined it would probably have something to do with him.

 

 

_To be continued..._


	10. Chapter 10

 

 

 

 

  **Brìgh gach cluiche gu dheireadh.**  
The essence of a game is at its end.

 

 

I fell asleep that night in front of the fire, tucked back against King's chest with the blanket wrapped around both of us;  I was getting used to the scratchy, ratty-edged wool, and though it still broke me out in a decidedly unattractive itchy red rash for several minutes every time I got under it, the heavy warmth it brought was more than welcome enough to counteract the initial discomfort.  But my longful thoughts had begun straying to the thick down comforter that was on my bed back at the tavern, in my warm little room above the common area with its radiant oil heater and private bath and my suitcase full of comfy pajamas and extra socks.

The only thing it didn't have was the dark haired man stretched out behind me, whose hands were currently sliding up to my breasts to play teasingly, achingly, with my nipples under the blanket.   _Too bad we couldn't have gotten snowed in there instead of up here in the Misery cabin._

But once we were done pushing and moaning and tangling our arms and legs around each other under that scratchy old travesty of a blanket, I'd be hard pressed to remember ever falling asleep quicker, or being more comfortable and content when doing so.

 

The wind banging the window shutter above the bed woke us early the next morning and two things immediately shoved their way into my groggy awareness - I couldn't see any snow coming down outside the window, and there was a very stiff, very warm cock pushing itself between my thighs from behind.  Both brought a sleepy smile to my lips and I sighed, reaching back behind my head to tangle my fingers in his hair.

"King...are you awake?  Well, parts of you obviously are - "  I giggled a little when I felt his cock twitch against my butt.  There was that familiar sensation of softly radiating warmth in my lower belly followed by the odd shivery tickle as my body quickly responded to him, wetting me so efficiently that I could feel it trickle out of me.  Just like that, like flipping a switch.

It was amazing.

He was grinding up against my backside, moaning almost painfully, his big hands gripping my shoulders hard as he pulled me back against him.  His mouth was moving across the back of my neck heatedly, almost like kisses.  I'd stopped hoping for it, but my determination not to be insulted by his dogged withholding of that one particular intimacy did nothing to kill my desire for it and I closed my eyes tight, imagining that his were closed too, lost in the softness of his lips trailing over my spine.

I shivered and pushed my hips back against him when I heard him speak in that raspy morning voice that never failed to make my toes curl.

"I need you, Molly."

_What?_

_Did I - did he just - ?_

I turned my head to try to see his face, but it was buried under my hair and I couldn't see him.  All I could hear was his labored breathing and the sound of the blanket rubbing against our skin as he pumped his hips against me, backlit with the crackling of the fire and that neverending wind howling through the trees.  I knew I couldn't have heard him right, but he'd said it clearly and I didn't really see how I could have misunderstood.  I was wide awake and clear headed...but maybe he wasn't?

"What did you say?"

"Hmm?"

"You said you need me."

He stopped moving and pulled his face away from my neck - if there's ever been a moment in the history of awkward intimate moments that would define the genre, this was it.  We were both still and silent for what felt like forever before he finally spoke again.

"No, I said I _want_ you."

 _Oh no you didn't_ I thought, suddenly angry.   _You're not getting away with that cowardly shit._

"No you didn't, I heard you, you said _I need you."_

He moved away from me and rolled over onto his back, laying an arm over his face and sighing with obvious frustration.  "And why the hell would I say that?"

"I don't know, you're the one that said it - "

I stopped mid-accusation when I saw the grim set of his lips.  I was pissing him off and I knew just one more word from me would get me thrown out into the snow again.  Retreat was preferable.  "Sorry, you're right.  I'm still kind of asleep and that stupid shutter is banging."

I settled in against his shoulder and nuzzled my face into the curve of his neck, wondering why we both seemed suddenly so uncomfortable.  They were just words, mumbled during that groggy window of time between first waking and the onset of the mind-blanking pull of arousal...it wasn't like one of us had accidentally said _I love you_ in the heat of a freaky moment.  But I could tell that something had shifted between us, like a turning point in a long road trip, and when I finally coaxed him out of his sudden disinterest the ensuing sex was quick and impersonal, a simple fulfilling of a need.  Still good, no doubt about that, but he never looked me in the eyes again...and those little pecks around my lips that had strayed agonizingly close to kisses lapsed back to furious bites across my shoulders and chest, the tenderness of his mouth gone and replaced with the almost angry urgency of his teeth on my skin.

_They were just words._

But words were something King McClary was unfailingly careful with.  I'd never heard him say a single word that didn't serve a specific purpose; he didn't chat frivolously with me even though I'd been in the house with him for almost a week and he was, for the most part, silent unless he had something direct to say.  Even his curses were concise and to the point.

He'd said four words more than I'd ever expected to hear him say, and as he lay staring at the ceiling with his fingers running lazily through my hair while our breathing slowed back to something less than a fever pitch, I felt like I would have given just about anything to hear him say them again.

 

 

"Storm's blown by."

He was standing in the open door, letting the heat out and the cold in, not seeming to care much one way or the other until I stomped up behind him and slammed it shut.

"It's still twelve degrees."

He looked at me with that annoyed sort of cultural indifference that he always pulled out on me when I said something that didn't correspond with his own knowledge;  apparently fahrenheit and celcius were just another bone of contention to add to the long list of things we didn't agree on.  But I wasn't about to do the math in my head, so I raised my eyebrows at him and said slowly, "It's. Fucking. Cold."

"You're a city girl."

"Yeah, and you're a backwoods caveman.  The temperature is the same for both of us."

He squinted his eyes at me, like he was analyzing what I'd just said for any fallacy he could find.  Apparently he didn't settle on any, because he yanked his coat on and went outside without another word.

 

 

Not much was said between us for the rest of the day, not that we ever had much to say to each other to begin with.  But when he wasn't staring out the window like he wished he had a good excuse to be outside, his eyes kept falling to my chest - and after a while I finally realized it was my necklace, not my boobs, that were drawing his attention.  I lifted my pendant by the chain and let it dangle, noticing how his eyes followed it.

"Do you want it?"

He blinked, brows furrowing as he pulled his stare from the little glass globe to my face.  He didn't seem to understand what I'd said, so I slipped it off over my head and held it out to him.  "You can have it, if you like it."

"What would I want with it?"

"I dunno...it's just a pretty thing, remember?  It's not really meant to serve any purpose...except maybe to make a person happy."

I thought for a second that he was going to argue with me about the uselessness of things that serve no purpose, but he suddenly reached out and took it.  He didn't say anything, just held it in his hand and looked at it.  I couldn't stop myself thinking about how attached he seemed to be to my underwear and things started to stumble over each other in my head, sorting what I knew from what I assumed, and I realized with a sudden and uncomfortable stab of sadness that King wasn't gathering things to remember me by.  He had no need for useless things, he'd made that abundantly clear.  But _these_ things...my underwear, my necklace...useless by nature, but he seemed to be struggling to find a use for them, to validate keeping them.  The underwear had already found its place in his short list of useful things.  But this fixation with my necklace was just too curious.

He stared hard at the little glass pendant, scowling, but not with anger or annoyance.  It was more like an intense concentration, like he _needed_ for this little useless thing to have some purpose, and he would never take his eyes off it until he found it.

My brain latched onto that one thing I had asked myself about him before, that niggling suspicion that his tactile fetish was maybe something more.

"Do you have sensory issues?"

He looked past the pendant in his hand at me, his face blank.  "What?"

I knew he either genuinely didn't understand what I meant, or he would pretend not to until I gave up - so to make it easier on both of us, I shrugged and snuggled down into the blanket, turning my attention to the crackling fire behind him.  As soon as my attention was off him he turned his own gaze back to the necklace, swinging it gently from its chain, watching it so intently I would have thought he believed it really held wishes inside it.

 

 

I woke on the sixth day to the sound of King whistling outside, that harsh, head-piercing shriek of a whistle that never failed to make me cock my head to one side like a dog.  I climbed up on the bed to look out the window, expecting to see him herding the sheep out of the barn since it was no longer snowing, but they were already up on the hill and I could see them milling around near the creek without him.  It struck me as odd for some reason, so I got dressed and tugged on my coat and boots, trudging out of the cabin through the ridiculously deep snow in search of that godawful whistling, picking up a rock along the way to hurl at him if it became necessary.  I was stumbling over a little hill that overlooked the eastern bluff when I saw him, standing near the cliff's edge with his back to me, just whistling like he was calling something.

There were no sheep around and I was about to turn and sneak back to the cabin on the assumption that this was some weird highland thing that I shouldn't be witnessing when I saw a little arrangement of stones on the ground near his feet.  It had just sunk into my head that it was a grave when I lost my footing on the snowy slope and fell, sliding to the bottom in a graceless show of clumsiness that was so typical, so bloody _like me,_ it didn't even draw King's attention.  He just slowly turned his head to the side as I scrambled to my feet, slipping and falling at least twice before I got my footing back.

"Sorry," I mumbled, dropping my rock and slapping the snow out of my hair.  "I just...I heard you and thought...never mind.  I'm sorry."

He turned back to the chasm in front of him without saying anything.  And as I flailed my way ridiculously back to the top of what was probably the gentlest slope in Scotland, I realized what he was doing.  The grave at his feet was tiny, not big enough for a person, and there was a little collar draped over the biggest stone.

He was calling his dog.

 

 

I felt sick for the rest of the day, like I'd seen something I would rather not have seen, but now that it was in my head it was going to be there forever no matter what I did to purge it.  He stayed outside for most of the morning and afternoon, not even coming in for lunch;  I saw him near the creek with the sheep when I tromped out to the outhouse, checking their hooves, letting them get some exercise after being locked up in the barn for days.  And when he finally came in, he poured himself a big mug of steaming hot coffee and went right back out again.  Being out of the house seemed to take away some of his surliness, which made sense.  He was an outdoorsman, being cooped up inside wasn't good for him.

But I knew something about him now.  He had feelings, despite how adamantly he worked to prove the opposite.  His eyes finally made sense to me - big, soft, kind eyes with all kinds of interesting truths in them that those sardonically cocked eyebrows kept carefully twisted into something less vulnerable.  Maybe he didn't talk much because his voice would just agree with his eyes and his cover would be blown.

Or maybe he was just mean and I was misinterpreting all of it in the hopes of finding something relatable in the gruff old badger.  But there was a little grave out there on the bluff and an empty bowl under his bed, and even if every bit of his emotional depth was tied up in missing a dog, it was still there.

 

With nothing better to do, I tidied the cabin a bit, made some fresh coffee, looked through his books before deciding on an old volume of mythology to read for a while before I got so restless I couldn't stand myself.  I didn't want to think and there was very little else to do.  The snow had completely stopped and the sun was finally out, so I bundled up and hiked out to the road, following it till I got to the crest where I could see down the mountain.  The snow was already melting off a bit, the deepest spots being where the wind had blown it up against the sides of the crags and it left most of the road fairly accessible.

It appeared to be passable as far down as I could see.

Which, I realized with a strangely melancholy feeling of sadness, meant I could leave soon.

I stared down the road back toward the cabin where King was trudging through the snow bringing the sheep back to the barn, and for the first time I saw him as something other than the rude reclusive mountain man with rough hands and no social graces.  He was more than that, though he did his damndest to hide it, and generally did a pretty good job of it.  But I'd just spent six days stranded in his cabin at his complete mercy, and the one thing that was standing out the most in my head was the way he'd stared at my little dandelion pendant like it held a whole new universe that he wanted desperately to believe he had a use for.

And his accidental words - had they been an accident? - kept dancing mockingly through my head, tipping its kilt up and showing me its ass.

_I need you, Molly..._

I knew he would never own up to it, but I also knew what I'd heard.  And though I had no idea why he would have made that colossal of a slip up, something about the fact that he _did_  made me smile.

 

 

_To be continued..._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Art credits to the wonderful @vivianstark at tumblr for the title pic, the top center manip, and the bottom center pic*


	11. Chapter 11

 

 

 

 

 

 **Mol an latha math mu oidhche.**  
Praise the good day at the close of it.

 

 

"You spent _the entire blizzard_ in his cabin?!"

"Well yeah, I mean where else would I spend it?  In the cab of my truck?"  I stared at her for a minute, till she started to fidget and cast her eyes down to her glass.  An irritating truth was beginning to dawn on me and I was starting to wonder what the hell was wrong with pretty much everyone in Scotland.  "You didn't even realize I was missing, did you?"

There was a sheepish look as she tried to hide behind her glass.

"I thought you were in Glasgow."

"Thanks a lot Glenda!  Good grief - I could have been dead up there on the mountain and nobody would have known until you sent the bill for my room to my boss."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry."  The penitent look faded after a couple of swallows of ale and I knew what she was going to ask next.  "So - ?"

"No."

"Oh come on!  Six days?  I know you weren't sleeping with the sheep all that time and you can't convince me you spent it all on his floor again."

"Just don't."

She started to say something else but I put my hand up, suddenly feeling a little lightheaded.  I'd spent so much time aching cold and getting thrown into snowdrifts naked that there was no way I wasn't going to come down sick at some point.  My head felt stuffy and I knew it was coming.

 _Archaic barbarian better not have give me the damn flu._ I just wanted to go upstairs and pushed my glass away; the heavy dark ale I'd been getting used to suddenly didn't sound so good.  "Can I have some water instead?"

Glenda shrugged and took my glass, draining it herself in two swallows before fetching me a bottle of water from the little fridge behind the bar.  I was trying really hard not to let my curiosity get the better of me, but she'd known King for a long time and I _knew_ she had information.  Six days in his cabin had taught me very little about the man behind the scowl other than some very basic, very simple truths.

I knew that he had a heart, and that it wasn't made of stone.

I knew he was short on temper and long on silence.

I knew he loved to touch soft things and that my necklace fascinated him in an almost childlike way.

And I knew that people seemed to rub him wrong, not just in an annoyance kind of way, but in a way that I was starting to think might be deeply rooted in the same sensory peculiarity as his obsession with my silk underwear.

But everything I'd gleaned was from observance only, and his stubborn refusal to communicate on any level deeper than how to get through the day was the most frustrating thing I'd ever come up against.  People usually talked to me, once I got them loosened up and comfortable with my own overabundance of words.  But not King.  Every time I opened my mouth I could see him tense up.  It was almost like I was hurting him. 

"What do you know about him anyway?"

"About the same as everyone else knows - not much."  She busied herself wiping down the bar and wasn't looking at me, so I let my perverse need for information sneak out just a bit more, hoping she wouldn't get suspicious about my motives.

"But you've lived here your whole life, right?  And he's been here all that time?"

"No, no - he was gone for a long time.  I mean, he lived here when he was a kid, then his dad died and he went away.  Glasgow I think.  He came back here when he was in his early twenties, I guess."

"How old is he now?"

"Mid thirties, I think?  Nobody really knows.  There's no records on him at the courthouse, which makes me think he wasn't born here."

That seemed strange.  "How do you know there's no records on him?"

A bunch of people were coming in, a tourist group it looked like, distracting her from the suspicious look she was starting to aim at me as she yelled for her waitress to come out of the kitchen.  "My civic duty bit me in the ass a couple of years ago and I got recruited to help the census guy.  We had one resident more than the records indicated, and the missing number was him."

"Then how do you know about all that last-king stuff?"

"You don't need birth records for that.  Everybody knows who his daddy was - and he's got the ring."  She came out from behind the bar and settled onto a stool next to me, facing the main room.  I'd forgotten about the heavy silver crown on his right hand.

"Oh yeah, The One Freaking Ring.  I've seen that thing up close, it's really ragged looking."

"Of course it is, it's been worn by a hundred kings before him, into battle and all that.  And since he's had it I know it's dented the forehead of many a drunken brawler in this noble establishment, I'll tell you.  And you know they didn't exactly have a Kay Jewelers back then to make the thing, it was probably hammered out on an anvil or something."

"That's pretty much what it looks like."

My cheeks felt a little bit warm when I thought about that battered ring scraping across my bare back, but even more so when I remembered where else it had been, on the finger that he'd pushed inside me - I'd felt it, the warm silver holding the heat of his hand, radiating it into the soft sensitive flesh of my private bits.  That thing had touched me more than I'd touched myself and the idea of that seemed a little bit sacrilegious.  I wondered, just briefly, how many queens had felt the same sensation over the centuries.

"What's that look for?"

I wasn't sure how my face looked right that moment, but I dropped it to as straight as I could get it and tried to look innocent.  "What look."

"You know what look - the one on your face right now, the one heavily implying the royal signet of Scotland's been up your hoohaw."  She was grinning broadly, a look that quickly dissolved to horror when my sheepish expression didn't dispute it.  "No way!  Oh my god!"

"Okay I don't want to be having this conversation with you, can we just - "

The door slammed open just then and a man stumbled in, barely keeping to his feet as he righted himself and shut the door, turning back to us to offer a deep dramatic bow as he sauntered to the bar where we were sitting and hefted himself up onto a stool.

"Aw shite, it's Dave MacDale."

"At yer service ladies."  He gave me a blatant look-over, grinning ridiculously, obviously already half drunk and probably having just been run out of the other pub.  "I've seen you around, haven't I?"

"No."  I didn't know who Dave MacDale was, but though I was grateful for his interruption, I wasn't much liking the lewd way he was leering at me.  "Glenda give me the paper please, I need to look something up."

She handed me the day's paper and I tucked it under my arm, giving Dave MacDale a dismissive smile as I grabbed my water and headed up the stairs to my nice, warm, comfortable little room.  My room with heat and television and a bathtub and room service...and a lovely big comfortable bed that I didn't have to share with an overly tall, overly grumpy Scotsman with bad manners and no sense of which side of the bed was his.  I tossed the paper on the pillow and flopped across the mattress, heaving a sigh of pure bliss at this little bit of luxury that I'd missed so desperately.

I was just about to doze off when I remembered what I'd wanted the paper for.  Kicking my shoes off and popping open my water bottle, I rattled through the pages until I found the For Sale section, my eyes quickly falling to what I was looking for.  King had taken my underwear as rent the first night he'd had to be inconvenienced by my presence - I felt I owed him something a little bit more useful than that for the six nights he'd just spent sharing his tiny bed, his short patience, and his weird food with me.

But it was more than just paying him back for his half-assed hospitality.  I wanted to give him something that would force him to remember me, because I felt like the minute I left, he would happily forget me...and for some stupid reason, my heart couldn't accept that.

 

 

In the morning I drove out to a farm on the outskirts of a neighboring town - unfortunately _neighboring_ in this part of Scotland meant a three hour drive, but thanks to my impeccable city-born skill of finding even the most difficult to reach places with the most basic of directions, the makeshift map only turned me around twice and I arrived with little incident at the farm I was looking for.  A burly older gentleman in overalls met me at the gate with a suspicious glare that never left his face even after I'd told him what I was there for.  He looked me over slowly, then cocked his head toward a barn in the distance and told me to pull on up the drive as he went around the back of my truck and climbed up on the tailgate.

I must have second guessed myself a half dozen times before we got there, but when he swung the barn door open and I saw what I'd come for, I knew it was right.

 

"You're a cute thing, aren't you?"

A whine answered me from the back seat, followed by the thump of a little body hitting the back of the passenger seat.  The puppy was about eight weeks old and already had a goal in life - to sit in the front with me at any cost, no matter how many times I told him no.  I gave him a scolding look in the rear view mirror but he didn't seem to care in the least, just took another scrambling leap at the headrest and failed, once again, to clear it.

"You're kind of stupid, too.  Or are you just determined?  They're sort of the same thing sometimes..."  No sooner had I said it than I realized I could just as well be talking about myself, and when the puppy took another clumsy dive at the passenger seat, I reached back and petted him on the head.  "Yeah, he's gonna _love_ you."

 

King was in front of the cabin chopping wood when I pulled up;  he stopped and stood there watching me as I got out, his face twisting into a scowl when I clapped my hands and the puppy jumped out, heading immediately for the sheep that were milling around at the troughs.  It broke into an insane cacophony of crazed barking, zigzagging back and forth nipping at the sheeps' tails and in general making a huge nuisance of his little self instantly.  King watched for a moment, then turned his scowl on me when I got to where he was standing.

"What the fuck is that?"

"That's a dog."

"I see it's a fucking dog, why is it dicking with my ewes?"

He didn't seem very pleased to see me and I realized suddenly that I might have made a very big mistake - I'd never stopped to think about whether or not he would _want_ another dog, I was just determined to get him one to replace the one he'd lost.  For all I knew this wasn't even the right kind.  "Shepherds need a dog, right?  To help with the herd?"

"Flock."

"Flock, whatever.  You don't have a dog anymore, so I thought...you said you just hadn't had time to get another one yet...so I..."  I stammered ridiculously for a minute, afraid to look at him, afraid I'd insulted him or made him angry with an incorrect presumption.  But when I put my hand over my eyes to block the sun and could finally see his face, the scowl he'd been wearing when I arrived was gone.  He was watching the puppy with what looked like a begrudging interest.  I looked over at the sheep;  the pup was charging around them, yipping and flopping around, falling over his feet in his excitement.  "I got him from a farmer in Blythe, he said he'll be a good sheep dog if you just let him run with them for a couple of weeks."

King didn't say anything, but his eyes were locked on the dog, and I thought I saw something soft taking the place of the harsh look he'd had before.  I stood there awkwardly beside him for a long while, not really sure if I should leave or stay or wait for him to give me some indication of what he wanted when he suddenly let loose one of those unbelievably loud whistles, just about splitting my skull and making the puppy freeze in its tracks.

"Come!"

The single command - even though I knew it was for the dog - sent a disconcerting shiver through my thighs when I remembered him saying the very same word to me, in a much quieter tone but with the same exact inflection, in very different circumstances not so long ago.  And the dog seemed to have the same reaction I'd had;  frozen in place, not really sure what to do, understanding full well that the man giving the order meant business but conflicted on how exactly to fulfill his demand.  But he caught on just like I had, and immediately came loping over to where King was crouching down with his hand out.  There was no verbal praise, just like there hadn't been for me...but he scratched the puppy behind its ears and it seemed to understand that it had done something pleasing.

 _Oh my god_ I thought with a mortified realization of what I'd done.   _I just gave him a canine version of myself._

 

 

I followed him into the cabin without invitation and waited until he sat down in his chair in front of the fireplace before I approached him.  He didn't seem to care one way or the other about me being there and I interpreted it to mean he felt somewhat comfortable with me now, not put out so much by my presence, which I supposed could only be a good thing - I knew he didn't take easily to people and much preferred solitude over company, so the simple fact that he opened his arms and let me sit down on his lap was a good sign.  I had settled in and gotten comfortable when he reached up and took my chin in his hand, forcing me to look at him.  I didn't resist and as soon as he saw I was being compliant, his touch softened a little, though his stern look didn't.

"Why did you bring a dog?"

"You needed one."

He shook his head, giving me a warning look.  "No, that's not it.  Tell me the truth."

I just stared at him, not sure what he expected me to say.  I was leaving soon, surely he knew that.  I fidgeted on his lap and tried to figure out an answer that would satisfy him, but my head went stubbornly blank until my eyes fell to something glinting inside the open neck of his jacket.

 _My dandelion necklace._  He was wearing it around his neck.

And suddenly the answer came to me, one that was both honest and that I knew he could comprehend.

"I wanted to give you something useful."

He stared me in the eyes for a long while before he finally nodded, looking down at my hand where I was playing absently with the pendant.  He seemed to understand.  Pulling my head forward to rest his forehead against mine, he closed his eyes and we sat there, silent, listening to each other breathing until it sounded like one person instead of two.

"Thank you, Molly." 

 

 

 

_To be continued..._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Art credit to @vivianstark at tumblr for the gorgeous header pic*


	12. Chapter 12

 

 

 

 **Eiridh tonn air uisge balbh.**  
A wave will rise on quiet water.

 

In the morning I stepped outside, wrapped up in the scratchy old blanket that I'd finally made peace with and a cup of very black, very hot coffee in my hands, to the sound of King whistling and the puppy barking.  Blinking hard in the ridiculously bright morning sun, I finally focused on the direction the noise was coming from and saw them halfway between the barn and the creek;  King was crouched down clapping his hands and the puppy was running back and forth, stopping when he put his hand up and charging off the other way when he clapped.  And when he whistled he came running, ears flopping, falling over onto his back and flailing around happily as King scratched his stomach.  It was cute as hell and I realized when I heard the tone of his voice that he was training him, not just playing with him - but there was an approving inflection in his words that made it fairly obvious he was getting attached to the hyper little thing as well.

He looked up and saw me;  I waved, holding up my cup of coffee to see if he wanted to come join me.  He whistled again and the pup fell in behind him, following clumsily, and I felt an almost overwhelming sense of finally having done something right as I watched them go to the barn.  I heard King order "Maul, come!" and the puppy ran inside obediently.

I handed him my cup when he got to me and he took a big swallow, his eyes raking over me suggestively as he tugged the front of the blanket out far enough to look down it.  I was naked underneath it and he grinned.

"So is maul a command?  What's it mean?"

"It's a name."

"Maul's a name?"  I looked past him toward the barn where I could hear the puppy whining to get out.  "You named that sweet little boy after a Sith lord?"

"He's a female and I named her after you."

It took a second and I felt stupid when it finally registered, even stupider when I saw the look on his face.  Maul.   _Mol._  He was trying hard not to say something scathing, I could tell - but to his immense credit he succeeded and didn't say anything at all.  But the impish grin on his lips told me all I needed to know about what was going on in his head and I surrendered, giving him permission to make fun of me.  "Okay, I get it.  I can't help it if I don't understand half of what you say, you don't speak English."

"I was born in Britain, I'm the only one who _is_ speaking English here.  I dunno _what's_ coming out of your mouth."

"Yeah but you can at least understand me, right?"

"Understanding you's not the problem."  He leaned down, getting right in my face.  "It's waiting for you to finish."

 

 

I guess we must have spent most of the afternoon in his bed, again, finally learning to communicate in ways that seemed alien to me until I realized he wasn't going to stop putting his hand over my mouth every time I started to talk - but me pushing him onto his back and climbing on top of him was acceptable and earned me the softer touches and half smiles that I'd been trying to get from him through conversation.  He was pushing his fingers into my mouth, effectively silencing any further attempt I might make to say something, and as I bit down on that heavy silver ring and watched his sleepy smile spread wider, something dawned on me.

_Words don't mean anything to him._

Spoken words, anyway...the stacks of books around the cabin, all very frequently read based on their ragged condition, made one thing very clear.  He loved words when they went in through his eyes instead of his ears.

That seemed important for some reason, but at the moment he was sliding his lips across my ribcage while his fingers slipped slowly in and out of my mouth, and whatever it was I was trying to sort out in my head went right out the window along with what was left of my now-skimpy inhibitions.  He was so adept at stripping those things away, any unease I might be holding onto, the self consciousness that crept in when his hands pulled away the last of my clothing and I was naked in front of him, his eyes - the same eyes that devoured all those words in all those books - taking in every last consonant, vowel, and syllable my body had to offer.  We were conversing without speaking and it seemed to be a calming thing for him, settling that surly nature and pulling the stern demeanor out of both his posture and his expression.

 _How could I have been so wrong about him?_    This wasn't a caveman laying underneath me with my dandelion pendant around his neck.  This was a quiet, reserved soul in a big tattooed body that just wanted to be left alone even though something inside there begged for a little bit of quiet understanding.  And here I was, invading his mostly wordless world, talky and extroverted and asking questions all the time, inundating him with the very thing he didn't like...words, and so many of them.  I thought I must seem to him like one of those awful talking fish on the wall that blast you with singing and ridiculous inane chatter every time you walk past it.

And I kept coming back.

And he kept letting me, even though my very presence was such an upset to his simple little life.  He had things the way he wanted them, the way they suited him best, and I was basically stomping around kicking things over and touching everything and making him interact with me when all he wanted to do was take care of his sheep and read his books and exist in the quiet wild of his own world.

"I'm sorry, King."

I said it before I realized I was saying it, and he stopped his exploration of the side of my neck and brought his eyes up to mine.  There was no question in his face, and if he didn't know what I was apologizing for he did a good job of pretending that he did.  And like I was entirely prone to do, I opened my mouth to say something else.

And as he was prone to do, he reached up and put his hand over my mouth again.

_"Shhhhh."_

I didn't like being shushed, I never had, but instead of prying his fingers off my face I just sat there, looking down at him.  I could feel his belly going up and down with his breathing where I was sitting on him.  It seemed so peaceful, like this moment was meant to exist in its own silent little bubble, so I swallowed my words and curled up on his chest as he lay back with me, shivering under the warmth of his big rough hands sliding over my back.

 

 

Night was just beginning to creep slowly over the hill when I left him;  I hadn't intended to spend another night, I hadn't even intended to spend the _previous_ night, but my plans seemed to have a way of getting off track when I tangled my world with King's.  But I dressed by the dim glow of the dying fire and sneaked out, leaving him sleeping, knowing he would get up soon to stoke the fire and check the sheep.  The puppy - I'd begged him to let her come in when we stopped to eat dinner and he, surprisingly, had allowed it - poked her head up from her spot on his chair and I quieted her whining with a pat on the head and a warning to keep the noise down.

I drove back up to my work site to gather my equipment before darkness fell, knowing it would be a scary trip down the mountain once it got completely dark;  my testing was done, my reports all submitted, I was just waiting for the lab back home to analyze everything and tell me if it was time to come home or if they needed more tests.  But I knew my time in Scotland was coming to a close, and as I tossed the weather beaten gear into the back of the truck I looked down the hill toward King's cabin.  I couldn't see it through the trees, but I could see the smoke from the chimney, rising like a dragon's breath over the mountainside.

I realized then, with no small bit of sadness, that I was going to miss the cranky old ogre that lived there.  And against my better judgement, I wanted nothing more than to tell him so.

 

 

"King?"

I knew he hadn't expected me to come back, but I couldn't make myself go down that long twisty road to the village one more time without telling him that I was going home soon.  I wasn't sure if he would care, honestly, but _I_ cared - and I wanted to see his face when I said it, not wait and let someone else do it after I was gone and always have to wonder what his reaction had been.  I'd gotten scatterbrained the previous night in my rush to get off the mountain before nightfall and left a box of soil samples by the creek where I had been washing the mud off the tubes...and even though it was a bit of a pain going back down to the cabin, I knew I needed to see him again.  For all I knew it could be the last time.

I wandered around outside, looked in the barn, went down to the bluff.  I knew he wasn't likely to be in the cabin in the middle of the afternoon, but I didn't feel like tromping all over the countryside looking for him so I kicked open the door and let myself in - it was still sticky and difficult to open, even without ice freezing it shut - and yelped in surprise when I saw him sitting by the fire, one hand hanging down scratching the puppy's ears where it lay curled up beside his chair.

He turned around and looked at me, standing slowly as he put his book down.  The look on his face was a mixture of confusion and concern, and as I regathered my wits from the surprise of finding him there, I noticed he had something dangling from his other hand.

My pendant.  He seemed really attached to that thing, and it sent all kinds of confusing feelings through me.

"Are you okay?"

His voice was quiet but sincerely questioning, and I think I must have jumped a little when he spoke.  I'd sort of expected an annoyed _What are you doing back?_ and the lack of irritation in his words took me off guard.

"Yeah, no I'm fine, I just - I wanted to tell you something."  I couldn't pull my eyes away from the necklace twisted around his fingers and he finally came over to me, pushing the door shut behind me.  I stood there stupidly, not sure exactly what I wanted to say to him, and when he moved in front of me I had to force myself to look up at him.  The heavy black stubble across his chin and cheeks was quickly headed toward full blown beard status and I thought sadly for a moment that it was a shame to cover up that pretty face, even though something about the idea of him with a beard made my thighs feel funny.  I hated that I wasn't going to be around to see it once it was completely grown out.

"Your truck's not here."

"No, I walked down from the site."

His hand came up and cradled my cheek, his long fingers pushing up into my hair.  "What did you want to tell me?"

"I'm...I'm leaving soon.  I don't know when exactly, but my work is done and I'm just waiting on them to call me now."

He looked me in the eyes for a long while before he nodded.  It was just a quick nod, like he was simply acknowledging what I'd said, and there was absolutely nothing in his face to tell me how he felt about it.  And I wanted to know, badly.  Did he care?  Was he indifferent about it?  Would he miss me at all, or was he relieved that I was finally going to get my noisy self out of his quiet life?  His hand was still against the side of my face and I leaned my head over into it, refraining from asking any of those questions out loud.

Before I realized what was happening, he'd gathered me into his arms and pulled me up against him.  There was a brief moment when he rubbed his face against my cheek and I shivered from the scratchy tickle of his whiskers, but his lips stopped just a hairs breadth from mine and I didn't even try to stop myself from groaning in disappointment.  If he noticed it he didn't give any indication of it, just hefted me up onto his hips and carried me over to the bed, setting me gently down on it.  When I opened my eyes he was standing there looking down at me, reaching up slowly to hang my necklace from one of the bedposts.

"I want to look at you, Molly."

I wasn't sure what he meant, so I just laid there until he reached down and started to unbutton my shirt.  I let him;  when I'd tried to help him before he'd slapped my hands away, so I just waited and watched his face while he undressed me.  When he was done he just stood there looking down at me, his eyes sweeping slowly over me, bringing a heat to my cheeks that made me desperately want to try to cover myself.  He didn't say a word, just undressed himself and and edged onto the little bed next to me, shoving me over till I scooted toward the wall to make room for him.

 

Of all the times we'd slept together, with the sexual intensities varying wildly from _crazed animals mating_ to _tender lovemaking,_ this one - I didn't have any words for this one, absolutely nothing, complete and total blank.  He whispered to me, using more words than I'd ever heard from him before, and though most of them were uttered so quietly that I couldn't understand them, I knew in my heart what he was doing.  I was trying my best to be quiet for him, to give him what he needed, silencing my own need for talk so that he could relax and be comfortable with me.  And now he was returning the favor, giving me _words,_ finally letting me hear him speak just for the sake of speaking.  It was heartbreaking in its unlikely sweetness.  I didn't even care that half of it was in a strange language.

 _He was talking to me,_ and it wasn't to tell me to be quiet or to order me around or to express annoyance at me.

It was the kindest and most unexpected gift he could have given me, and when I impulsively pulled his head down to kiss him on the brow, he let me.

 

I don't know how much time passed, but judging from the sunlight's position on the floor, it was late afternoon when we finally stopped.  I was still a little bit giddy from listening to him talk in what he finally told me was Scots Gaelic, but when he sat up and I pressed against his back to kiss his shoulder, something suddenly changed between us.  I knew instantly what it was.  I'd kissed him twice now - once above his eye and once on the back of his shoulder - and each time he'd allowed it, but I knew, I could _sense,_ that it was a struggle for him to accept that sort of touch.  The realization I had come to early on with him, that kissing was too intimate of an act for him to cope with, came rushing back to me at just about the same exact moment that he stood up and walked over to the fire.

"Don't try to make me out out to be something that you want, Molly.  Because I can't be that, whatever it is."

"No, I - I just - "

"I can see it in your eyes, Mol.  You keep hoping there's something in here that'll give you an excuse to care about me."  He shook his head, crouching down to stoke the fire.  "There's nothing.  Don't waste your time."

Something felt final in his words, like he was shutting the door between us and didn't plan on opening it again.  I felt hurt, but mostly I felt sad...because no matter what his words were saying, I could see in those big, soft eyes that there was a pain that came with voicing it.  He didn't want to shut the door, but he felt like he had to.  I could breach that wall of intimacy with him, but he couldn't do it back.  I knew he was trying to spare me whatever he thought I was going to suffer by caring about him.

"King, don't do that."

He turned his head and looked at me, and in the space of a heartbeat the softness in his eyes turned cold and hard.  It was a little bit scary and without thinking I pulled the blanket up to cover myself, suddenly feeling like I needed protection from that angry face.

"Don't fucking tell me what to do."

His tone felt like a punch in the gut and I just sat there looking at him, wondering why he'd shifted gears so suddenly - he'd been so gentle, so tender and undeniably _nice_ for the last two days, and now this abrupt change from actually tolerating me to seeming like he wanted me to be anywhere except in his bed...it was sharp and cruel and it stung way more than I felt good about admitting to myself.  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him _All I wanted to do was tell you that I'll miss you_ when the door flew open with a bang and a young woman stepped inside, stomping the snow off her boots like she'd just walked into her own house.

"King?"  She stopped where she stood and looked at us, blinking hard for a second, and it was then that I noticed she had a tiny child in her arms, snuggled in tightly under her wrap.  She and I met eyes and there was a tense moment where each of us stared at the other in silent surprise before she got her wits back about her.  "Oh - sorry.  I'll wait outside."

I didn't have any idea what else to do, so I gave her a sheepish wave from under the blankets as she shut the door behind her.  King didn't react other than to rake one hand through his hair, still crouching in front of the fireplace like a woman with a baby hadn't just let herself into his house.  A long silence sat heavy between us before I finally couldn't take it anymore.

"Are you going to go out?"

He sighed after a moment, stirring the coals with a stick before he finally tossed it in and stood up.

"She's here for the same thing you are.  Why would I need two of you?"

That was it.  That was over the line and I didn't feel like putting up with any more of his rude shit, especially when I thought we had begun to understand each other - I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up, taking the blanket with me, and quickly dressed without looking at him.  He didn't say anything, just sat down in his chair with his arms tucked up behind his head, watching me with that smug asshole look that I was beginning to think had been created specially for him.  It was like everything that had happened between us for the last week and a half had been erased and we were back to square one, with him an arrogant jerk and me being perturbed by the _fact_ that he was an arrogant jerk.  It wasn't a place I wanted to revisit.

I didn't say a word and neither did he, and when I stomped out of the cabin, I left the door standing open behind me.

 

As I sludged across the field toward the crag I heard the cabin door shut and stupidly glanced back;  he was striding across to the Jeep that was parked next to the barn where the woman stood with her baby.  I saw him reach his hand out to touch the baby's head, and then I couldn't look any more.

The baby's hair was as black as his.

 

 

 

_To be continued..._

 


	13. Chapter 13

 

 

 

 

 **Is fheàrr teicheadh math na droch fhuireach.**  
Better a good retreat than a bad stand.

 

 

I spent the next two days driving around the countryside, seeing something of Scotland other than that damn mountain and the little village at its base.  The King and his kingdom were holding little allure for me anymore and even though I caught myself crying often as I wandered around towns and villages in the outlying valleys, I'd made up my mind.  I wasn't going to miss him...if anything, I would just be missing the idea of him.  The _reality_ of him was an entirely different thing, and not worth my time or my tears.

The reality of him was untouchable.

And though I had actually touched him, my fingers were already committing the sensation to memory as something less like warm flesh and more like cold marble.  An unmoving, unthinking, unfeeling likeness of a man that I thought I had met, but whom I had actually only seen on a pedestal in a park somewhere, probably with a plaque at the feet bearing the title  _Last of the Celtic Kings._

The worst part was that even though my fingers were doing that, there were other parts of me doing something else entirely.

 

I tried my best to clear my head before I started back to the village, I really did.  But every time I stopped somewhere and looked to the west, I could see that damn mountain, and Glenda's little history lesson kept clubbing me over the head.   _Everything as far as you can see - it all belongs to him._  I couldn't seem to drive far enough to get away from His Royal Fuckhead's lands, and it was seriously messing with my mood, my mind, my emotional and mental well being...I'd never gone through something like this before, having a person _haunt_ me like this, refusing to get out of my head and heart despite all my desperate attempts at purging him.  I didn't even want my feet touching dirt that belonged to him and I didn't want that damn cold Scotland rain making me shiver, because I knew he was out in it, herding his sheep over the crest and probably thrilled not to have to go around my work site anymore.  And over the vivid aural memory of the howling wind and the bleating marshmallow hellspawn and the crackling of the warm fire that had pretty much kept me alive for the better part of a week, the one thing I could hear the loudest was the quietest thing that had hit my ears the entire time I was with him.

_I need you, Molly._

He was right, I'd heard him wrong.  He would never say something like that, not to me, probably not to anyone.  And now that I knew it, it should have been so much easier to just sightsee and wait out my final days in Scotland, then go home and forget him - or at the absolute most, relegate him to the category he belonged in.   _Hot guys I shagged while I was in Europe._ But nothing felt any easier, and all I could keep hearing when I closed my eyes was whatever he'd been saying to me in Gaelic, and the way those soft words felt as they ghosted over my bare skin.

 

 

Somewhere in the long stretch between two outlying villages I pulled over at an ancient looking historical marker that told me to turn around and look west.  I knew what I was going to see, but I did it anyway.  That damn mountain.  I turned back to finish reading the marker and felt a jolt of shock when I got to the third line and saw a familiar name.

_The peak dominating the western view has been known since the early 1600's as McClary Sliabh, or Mount McClary, so named for the marauding Celtic King that took victory during the sieges of the western valleys._

So the McClarys were marauders.  Seemed appropriate.  And thieves too, if you listened to the story my underwear had to tell.  But seeing that name here, on an old marker at least a hundred miles away from the mountain it was referring to...it made the whole thing far too real.  My first conversation with him, if it could be called that, bumped around tauntingly in my skull.

_They say you're really a king, that it's not just a name._

_Is that what they say._

He had never owned up to it one way or the other.  There had been a smile, but I couldn't remember just then if it had struck me at the time as amused, flattered, or just plain mocking.

_Since the victorious sieges, there has never been a time that a descendant of Thomas McClary hasn't lived in the Claighe region or on the sliabh itself._

"Huh...well I'll be damned."

I'd been just about to take a detour to a nearby town for the night, but sleeping in the shadow of that mountain wasn't going to make things any better - so I sucked it up and got back in my ragged old truck and headed back to Claighe to wait for the phonecall that would put me on a flight back home.

But I'd been waiting for three days now, and it was beginning to look like they'd forgotten me.

 

 

"D'you want an ale?"

I was barely in the door to the tavern, cold and wet and out of sorts pretty much the way I'd been since my arrival, and shook my head at Glenda before she had a chance to fill a glass for me.

"Water please."  I knew I sounded tired and unhappy but I didn't even care anymore.  This country had beaten the shit out of me both physically and emotionally, and there was nothing left for me to do but accept defeat with what was left of my dignity and crawl away quietly once I got my reprieve.  But Glenda was looking past me toward the back, and I felt a groan coming up before it even fully occurred to me why she was darting her eyes back and forth between me and whoever was back there.  I sighed and laid my forehead on the bar.  "He's in here, isn't he."

She patted the back of my head and put a glass of water down beside me.  "Sittin back there like a damn Nazgul, givin' everyone the stink eye.  I've had two tables of customers get up and leave because there was no place else to sit but near him."

I groaned again, head still on the bar.  "Sounds about right."

I'd decided against sticking around to drink my glass of water and was gathering my wet coat and scarf to slink dejectedly up to my room when it was Glenda's turn to groan.

"Aw shite, it's Dave MacDale."  

I had to laugh - it was the same exact thing she said every time he came through the door, and he always replied exactly the same way each time.  This time was no exception.

"Hello ladies!"

I was in the process of sliding down off my barstool when he spotted me, and in the stupidest move in the history of stupid moves committed in the taverns of Scotland, he made the decision to harass me.

"Holy feckin shite but it's the lovely bitch wit' the arse fit for the likes of me!"

Glenda and I exchanged a look and I knew she was already ready to toss him out.

"Something tells me I should probably be insulted, but to be honest I didn't understand enough of that to know if it was bad or not."

"You're not missing anything."

Dave MacDale took two steps closer to me, wobbling a bit unsteadily, and belched out a long rambling string of what I could only assume were curse words and lewd comments about my backside - and somewhere in the big middle of it I heard a familiar word.

_Caint._

I grabbed my glass and lifted it in salute.  "I know what _that_ word means."

He was drunk and I knew it, so I didn't pay any attention to what he was saying - until I saw Glenda's eyes go wide and turned around just in time to see King lower his head, slamming his glass down on the table hard enough to send a wave of ale sloshing over his hand.  Glenda had just enough time to grab me by the shoulder and pull me around behind the bar before he was up and over the table, hurling himself toward Dave MacDale like a cheetah taking down a zebra at the watering hole.  It was fast and it was messy and it was as impressive as it was scary.  The table crashed onto its side, scattering glass everywhere, but nobody cared much about the mess or the flying chairs or the screaming of the tourists in the corner who were standing up and trying to figure out how to run past the melee without getting sucked into it.

Punches were thrown and Dave had his head slammed into the floor about fourteen times before he finally got in a half assed kick that loosed King's grip on his neck enough to enable him to put space between them.  But King wasn't done with him, and Dave's hefty inebriation was making him slow to move and quick to stumble, and before he could head for the door King had him by the back of the neck and had shoved him face down into the bar.  Glenda and I stood there watching as he yanked the poor man's head up and forced him to look at me.

_"Apologize to the fucking lady for your goddamn shitty whoredog mouth, you fucking arsehole."_

I don't know if it was the almost comical hypocrisy of the wording or the fact that it was King McClary's mouth it was coming out of, but I burst out laughing.  Poor Dave MacDale got the most pitifully confused look on his face, right before King slammed his head into the bar again and shoved him so hard he fell.  Glenda threw her hands up and I knew the party was over.

"Alright McClary, out with you before the police come.  Take this drunken shite with you and get gone."

King looked at me, his eyes flashing with something murderous that made me look away quickly.  I wanted to stare him down, but I could barely even meet his burning glare as he let Dave slump to the floor and stepped over him on his way to the door, grabbing a bottle of whiskey off a table as he went.

"You deal with him Glennie, I'm finished."

 

 

I helped Glenda clean the place up after Dave had been dumped outside to wait for a cab;  I tried my best to avoid looking her in the eye, but she knew something was up and wouldn't stop staring at me as I swept up the broken glass.  There were still customers, though not nearly so many now, and I felt like I should apologize for the whole event.  I didn't know if King would have reacted that way to anyone being harassed or if it was just because of me, but either way, I shouldn't have been there to begin with.

"I'm sorry Glenda, I should have just gone on up to my room.  I was going to, I don't know why I was taking my time."

She gave me a sideways look that I didn't feel like interpreting;  instead of arguing with her I handed her the broom and went upstairs, falling face first onto that big nice bed that I suddenly realized wasn't near as big or nice as my own bed back home...and right at that moment I'd never missed anything so much in my life.

 

 

A couple of hours passed and I woke up groggy and disoriented, doing that completely lost blinking thing as I sat up and tried to figure out what time it was.  I was still in my clothes with my shoes on and felt awful and uncomfortable and really really thirsty, so I tromped back downstairs to get some cold water from the tavern fridge.  Glenda looked up from her conversation with some people who were sitting at the table King had climbed over, and as I looked around the room I felt like I'd stepped into the twilight zone.  Everything was cleaned up and put back in place and it looked as if nothing had happened, like I'd dreamed the whole thing.

Until Glenda whistled - what was it with these people and whistling? - and jerked her head toward the door.

"Hey, girl - McClary's outside."

"What?  I thought he left?"

"I did too, but he's out there sitting on the hood of his jeep looking all morose and pissed off."

"That's how he always looks."

"Yeah, but this is just a little more morose than pissed off, which is a bit unusual for him."

I was about to shoot back _And what am I supposed to do about it??_   when a sudden wave of something that felt suspiciously like pity swept over me.  I knew I didn't have any reason to feel sorry for him, but when I tried to ignore the fact that he was still here, sitting outside god only knew why, alone in the cold and dark, I knew that stupidly soft motherly side of me was going to win out and any fight against it would just be a waste of emotional energy.  And right at that moment I had emotional energy to spend on something worthwhile.

I slammed my bottle of water down on the bar and shoved the door open, stomping out into the parking lot and letting all my anger go.

"King McClary, what the fuck are you doing still here?!"

He looked up from where he was sitting on his hood and I swear it was like staring into the eyes of the devil.  A devil that was at least half drunk, if not more.

"Shut up you damn noisy bitch."

I put my hands on my hips and glared at him, kicking his feet off the front bumper and making him slide down off the hood in front of me.  "You just beat the shit out of a guy for calling me less than that."

"Yeah well...he didn't have any business talking to you that way."

"And you do?"

He leaned forward, shoving his face into mine.   _"Yes."_

The whiskey smell radiating off him was nauseatingly strong and I stepped back, not even caring enough anymore to argue with him.  "How much have you had to drink tonight?"  He fell against me and I struggled to hold him up, pushing him back against the front of his jeep.  "Did you finish that whole bottle you walked out with?"

He pushed me out of the way, reaching down to pick up an empty bottle from the ground, throwing it at the side of the building and laughing wickedly when it exploded all over the rose bushes.  "That one?"

 _Great._ No way he could drive himself up the mountain with that much alcohol in him, and I doubted any of the cabs would be willing to go up there in the middle of the night.  But I couldn't leave him in the parking lot, and it was starting to snow again.  Goddamn Scotland, always conspiring something shitty mean against me.

"Alright.  Against my better judgement I'm going to take you upstairs and get you a hot shower and see if that sobers you up enough to send you home.  But this in no way implies that you're forgiven, do you understand?"

He stared at me for a long, tense moment before he finally pulled his hand out of his pocket and held something up in front of my face.  His car keys.  I knew he was about to drop them in the mud so I snatched them out of his hand and turned to stomp back into the tavern.

"Come if you're coming - Glenda's not going to unlock after closing just to let your drunk ass in."

He didn't follow immediately, so when I opened the door and let it slam shut behind me I turned to look through the window and see if he was going to come or not.  He seemed to be debating it, but the curious thing was that the mean, angry look was gone from his face now that he thought I wasn't looking.  He seemed almost...confused.  And in that moment I knew something, another little revelation about him that I knew he hadn't meant for me to figure out.  All those angry expressions, the intimidating stares, the scowls and the snarling hostility that he heaped on me any time we weren't in his bed or wrapped up in each other in front of his fireplace...they were a protection, like a dog growling when it feels threatened, or a cat hissing and puffing up its fur to make itself look bigger and scarier.  He had that beautiful face, but when he masked it in a mean spirited glare, you forgot how gentle his eyes were or how sweet his smile was, and your defenses immediately came up in response.  He used these things to strip people of their compassion for him, because he didn't know how to react to kindness unless it was sexual.

 _So basically he's got two settings_ I thought, nearly snorting out loud when it came to me.   _Horny and hostile._

I reached out and knocked on the window to get his attention, giving him an impatient wave when he looked up.

"You coming or not?"

The scowl immediately fell back into place, but this time I didn't let it get to me.  I shrugged and turned around to walk off.

I wasn't even halfway to the stairs when I heard the bell above the door jingle.

 

 

 

_To be continued..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thanks (again!) to the great @vivianstark for the beautiful artwork!


	14. Chapter 14

 

 

 

 

 **Gabhaidh an connadh fliuch, ach cha ghabh a’ chlach.**  
Wet fuel may kindle, but a stone never will.

 

 

Everyone left in the tavern looked at him when he came back in, but their stares were shortened to quick glances and nervous eye-averting when they were met with his angry glare in return.  Glenda shook her head as we headed up the stairs, muttering something in Gaelic that made King snicker and say something back.  Whatever it was he said, it prompted Glenda to shoot him an angry finger and elicited another snide laugh from him.  I ignored them both and waved him into my room, not failing to notice the threateningly lewd look he gave me on his way in.  But I kept eye contact with him, telling him without words - since that seemed to be the best way to get through to him - that I wasn't going to be intimidated by him.  He paused for a long moment with his face close to mine, staring me right back in the eyes, and though I was honestly quivering in my boots I stood my ground until he smirked and turned away, strolling arrogantly into my room like it was his.

I slammed the door behind me and threw his keys on the dresser, none too gently.  He looked at them and then at me.

I knew what he was thinking, and I wasn't having any of it.  Not tonight.  Maybe not ever again.

"Let's get something straight between us, McClary.  You're not sleeping here, and you're not going to touch me while you're here.  If you try to, I'm sending you to sleep in your jeep.  You're not going to insult me or call me names or try to hurt my feelings in any way, because I'm sick of it.  Do you understand?  I've had enough of you."

He didn't respond, didn't move, didn't even blink.  He just stood there, dominating the middle of the room, forcing me to stay over near the wall where I was furthest from him and closest to the door.  But his head was lowered and he was staring at me from the tops of his eyes, all dark and threatening and ridiculously, annoyingly virile.   _Don't.  Just fucking don't.  Jackass._

I took a deep breath and realized the smell of the whiskey on his breath and the sweat on his skin was stupidly arousing.

"Go take your shower and get sobered up.  I know you have nothing to say to me, so don't even bother, just do it and then go, okay?  I'll get you some coffee."

I had just turned to go back downstairs for the coffee when he finally spoke.

"Why you doing this, Molly?"

My hand was on the doorknob and although my head was screaming  _turn the knob and get out now -_ my heart clutched up a little at the sound of his voice caressing my name.  Without thinking about much more than that, I looked over my shoulder at him and saw him still standing there...but his overall demeanor was different now.  He didn't seem so threatening any more, his back not quite so straight, his head no longer lowered and his eyes a bit softer, though sincerely questioning.  But the question was confusing, and I laughed a little as I pulled the door open.

"Because you hurt me, and I don't want to be hurt anymore.  Or did you mean why am I letting you use my shower instead of sending you off to test your luck on snowy roads with half a bottle of booze in your gut?"

I didn't think he would answer, so I stepped out into the hall.  As I was pulling the door shut, I heard him say quietly, _"Both."_

 

 

Glenda grabbed my hand as soon as I sat down at the bar and tugged my arm toward her.  "What are you _doing,_ girl?"

I shrugged;  I didn't feel like talking, which was, of course, unusual for me - but more than that, I didn't want to talk about _this._  But she seemed genuinely concerned and I was a little bit curious as to why.

"He's in no shape to be driving."

"That's not what I meant."  She cast her eyes toward the stairs like she expected a wraith to come slithering down them.  "You know he's not wired right, don't you?  I mean you can _see_ that."

"Yes, I see it.  He's got some issues.  Definitely not boyfriend material."  Something in the way she lowered her voice when she said _not wired right_ caught my attention and I decided maybe now was the time to finally press her for some serious answers.  "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean he's an odd one.  Always has been, even when he was a kid.  He didn't speak in school, they thought he was mentally deficient so they put him in the special classes till one of the teachers decided it'd be fun to test his IQ."

I had a feeling I knew where this was going, but I held my tongue and just stared at her until she continued.

"He tested off the charts, we're talking near genius level.  But the boy couldn't even say hello in the hallway.  He read every book in the school library, aced any test that wasn't verbal, ended up getting moved to the senior classes before he was ten.  But behavior problems - oh my god girl, that child was a handful.  He set fires, got into fights.  And then his pap moved the family off to Glasgow and nobody saw him again until he was a teen."

"Didn't you say his dad died?"

"Yeah, he came back here on his own, moved into that shack up there on the hill and started running this old farmer's flock, took 'em over completely when the old man passed the next winter.  Not much of a life for a man with that sort of an intellect.  Then one afternoon he just walked into the county clerk's office and signed the line of succession deeds for the village."

"Which means what?"

"Means he took over rights as Laird from his deceased father."  She tapped her finger, indicating the ring he wore.  "King McClary, sovereign of all you see.  But the deeds are permission, basically.  Permission for us all to keep whatever we have even though it belongs to him.  If he hadn't signed them, they'd have all lapsed into government possession and we'd have lost everything, down to the last one of us."

"But it's a name-only thing, the kingship, right?  I mean, you all own your houses and businesses, don't you?"

"For sure, but only because he says so.  And you want to know who doesn't own one single tangible thing in this world?"

I rubbed my eyes, knowing, again, where this was going.

"I'm gonna guess King."

She nodded, screwing the lid on the thermos and handing it to me.  "Yup.  Unless you want to count bloodlines as property, which I'm guessing he doesn't.  The thing is though, he _could._  He could claim it all and we'd have to either outright buy it all back from him or basically pay taxes to him.  But he doesn't...so we all sort of...take care of him."

"Meaning?"

She glanced up the stairs again, almost like she was afraid he was going to overhear her talking about him;  after a few seconds she actually crossed herself and leaned in close so that I could hear her now suspiciously lowered voice.

"If he wanders in here looking all ragged, someone will put a new coat or some boots in his jeep while he's having his ale.  He's healthy as a horse but if he comes down off the mountain with the sniffles or looking under the weather, doc Dunny's wife will come up with some excuse to get him over to their place, tell him there's a hole in the roof needs repair or something like that.  The doc puts whatever he needs in his coat pocket while he's up there doing the fixing."  There was a quick glance past my shoulder as she relaxed enough to retrieve her glass of ale from the other end of the bar.  "The vet takes a bowl of stew as payment for barn calls, the man at the bookseller gives him anything that's been sitting on the shelf for too long - on the premise of him using it for kindling, which we all know he doesn't, but nobody says so.  That sort of thing."

For some stupid reason Glenda's narrative was making my eyes tear up - the idea of King being, well, _king_ over these people but being the poorest person among them was kind of heartbreaking, really.  But I knew, just from the short amount of time I'd spent with him, that there was nothing he wanted more than to live life the way he chose to.  And that obviously meant not bothering with either possessions or position.  But the whole village looking out for him and taking care of his needs while handling his dignity so carefully...they knew he'd never accept help from them, so they did it without making it obvious.  They all seemed to care about him despite his surly, reclusive nature.  It was touching.

_Was that why the women paid him visits - ?  The time honored tradition of trading favors to the king for property?_

"What about the babies?  The kids you said everyone thinks are his?"

"Ah, you'll have to ask him about that.  The ladies don't say a word once they come down off that hill, they keep their mouths shut about whatever goes on in that cabin."

I could understand their position on that.  I knew what went on in that cabin and I didn't have any plans to tell anyone about it either.  I sighed and picked up the thermos, content with the small bit of information I'd gleaned from our conversation.  It wasn't really what I'd wanted to know, but I was leaving soon, taking more knowledge home with me than was strictly necessary was just going to make it harder when it came time to forget him.

"Thanks for this.  I'll send him on his way as soon as he's sober, he should be gone before you lock up."

She gave me a sideways look that said she believed pretty much anything except that.

"And if he's not?  I'm not getting out of bed to open the door."

I waved a hand at her as I tromped back up the stairs.  "I'm sure he'll think of something.  I doubt he'd have any moral compunction about kicking out a window."

"Don't you dare let him!"

I wasn't sure if I should laugh or not.  The idea of King putting a boot through her front glass was a scenario she seemed to have no problem believing was likely and I wondered how many times it had actually happened.   _God, that man._ I was at the top of the stairs when she yelled up "I mean it!  If he kicks out my window I'm billing your boss for it!"

I laid my head against the door to my room and groaned.

"Goodnight, Glenda." 

 

 

I was putting the coffee on the dresser when my phone beeped;  I'd missed a couple of messages and snatched it up from the bed where I'd left it, my hands suddenly shaking.  The number that flashed up on the screen was my boss and the timestamps verified he'd called twice while I was downstairs.

"Yes!  Me, here, sorry - I was getting coffee."  I took a deep breath and willed myself to settle down. _This was it._  I was about to either be called home or sentenced to another week of Scotland trying its best to kill me.  "Hello!"

"Molly, good to hear your voice.  I was afraid we'd lost you to the natives over there."

I could hear King turning off the shower and bit my lip to center myself.  "Nope, just sloshing around in the mud and waiting to get my reprieve."  I could hear the hopeful nervousness in my voice and took another deep breath, feeling a little bit dizzy.

"Good, good.  I just remembered you're on the other side of the planet, did I wake you?"

"No, it's like 11:30 at night here.  But it's okay, I'm not in bed yet."  I looked up and saw King at the bathroom door, a towel around his hips, long wet hair dripping on my floor.  I tried not to look at him, closing my eyes and putting my hand over my other ear even though he wasn't saying anything and likely wouldn't.  "So what's the word from the labs?  Are we done?"

"Yeah, it all looks good.  Got all your reports to the analysis division and they say we got everything we need."  I turned my back to King, not wanting to see his face as I waited for the next words.  "You're done, come on home Molly."

I almost dropped my phone, but settled instead for leaning back against the dresser.  It was what I was waiting to hear.  But now that I'd heard it, it felt like the bottom had just dropped out of my stomach, and there was something oddly hollow sounding in my voice when I finally gathered enough words to respond.

"Great.  I'll be on a plane tomorrow if I can book something.  There's been a lot of storms here - "

"Get back as soon as you can, I need you to take a look at that position we talked about."

I stammered for a few seconds, not sure I'd heard correctly.  I'd taken this assignment in the hopes of a promotion - field work wasn't my strength, and now that I'd had that fact solidly proven to me, the idea of a promotion seemed all the sweeter.  I nodded, realizing after a few seconds that he couldn't see me doing it.  "I'll do my best."

"Good.  Thanks for this, Molly - you did good.  See you soon."

 

I stood there for a few seconds after I'd hung up, a bit disoriented by the sudden speed of everything, inwardly elated at the praise but strangely let down.  My job was officially over, it was time to go home and start my new one.

My god had I _earned_   it.

I glanced over and saw that King hadn't moved from the bathroom doorway;  he just stood there looking at me for a long time, and when he finally spoke, his voice still sounded a little bit drunk - but it also sounded like he knew what was going on.

"Can I stay the night?"

I dropped my phone on the bed and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, ready to say no.

And then against my better judgement and all that's holy, I nodded.

 

 

 _To be continued..._  

 


	15. Chapter 15

 

 

 

 

 **Cha mhisd’ a’ ghealach na coin a bhith comhartaich rithe.**  
The moon is none the worse for the dogs’ barking at her.

 

 

I wasn't sure what I actually expected to happen that night, letting him stay when everything in me was screaming to shove him out into the hallway and let him find his own way home.  But I knew I wanted him, just one last time, if for nothing else than to put some sort of expression on his face.  Because he had gone blank, an unsettling, unreadable nothingness falling over his features that took away all of his humanity and left me with a very realistic marble statue standing in my bathroom doorway.  A marble statue that seemed to be struggling with something it couldn't - or didn't want to - comprehend.

But he didn't make a move to come near me, and I sat down on the edge of the bed with a heavy sigh that felt like it deflated my heart.

"So - "

"You're leaving."

"Yeah.  I didn't fold up and run, I think that means I beat this insane place."  I laughed, but it wasn't sincere and I could tell he knew it.  "I did my job and now I'm officially just a tourist.  But I've seen all I want to see, so there's nothing left now but to go home."

"Do you think you might come back one day?"

His question was quick, like he wasn't listening to me.  I knew he'd had a lot to drink - way too much - and it wasn't like manners had ever been high on his list of things to be conscientious about...but it still struck me as a little bit anxious and I stared at him for a minute before I answered him.

"No, I'm transferring to another division, I only did this job to get a promotion.  No more field work for me - I'm obviously not cut out for it, so the universe isn't going to suffer much I'm sure."

"I didn't mean for work."

"Why else would I come here?"  I said it before I thought about it, and the moment the words hit my ears I winced at the coldness in them.  That wasn't like me.  I wasn't a cold person, I never had been, and I'd never been able to fake it either.  He didn't say anything, but the blank expression was starting to shift and change into something else...something distinctly displeased.  But at least it was an improvement over the emotionless mask he'd been wearing.  In a hurry to change the subject, I glanced over at him again and saw he was twisting something between his fingers.  "You're wearing my necklace."

He looked down at his chest, at the pendant resting there against his skin, his fingers sliding down the long chain to touch it almost reverently.  There was a long, heavy silence between us before he finally spoke again, and when he did his voice was quiet, almost a whisper.

"Does it have any more wishes left in it?"

"What?"

"You said it's for wishes."

_You make wishes on it, or something._

"Oh...I never made any, so yeah, I would imagine there's a few in there."

He stared down at it for a long time, a sort of thoughtful look furrowing his brow as he pursed his lips and finally nodded.

 

It's unclear who started it, but at some point between his obsessive preoccupation with my necklace and me getting up to go in the bathroom, he grabbed me or I grabbed him, and the doorframe and my spine got up close and personal quick enough to bring a yelp of pain out of me.  He was biting my neck - _biting_ me, hard, and I pushed him back against the opposite side of the doorframe and laughed a little bit spitefully when his head whacked the hard wood.  There was a sudden shift in the mood between us and any sympathy or wishful consideration for each other's feelings was gone, swiftly shoved aside as he dropped his towel and began tearing at my clothes.

"Better get that rubber you keep demanding," he growled against my ear as I tugged at his hair, pulling his head back so I could rub my face against that scruffy beard that was beginning to cover his neck.

"Why are you suddenly willing to wear a condom?"

"I'm drunk."

"Yeah, so?"

"Every time I've gotten a woman pregnant I've been drunk."

I pulled his hair harder, separating us.

"So your sperm get superpowers when you've got alcohol in your system?"  We stared each other in the eyes for a long moment until I started to laugh, but he didn't seem to find it humorous in the least.  "I'm on a hormone shot, we're fine.  I just...find it kind of funny that you're worried about it _now."_

He shrugged, tossing the shirt he'd somehow managed to remove from my body onto the bathroom floor as he turned to stroll across to the bed.  "If you want to get knocked up that's your call.  But I don't do daddy."

"You don't - excuse me _what?_  What did you just say?"

He had just sat down on the edge of the bed and was running his hands over the soft blanket, not paying any attention to me.  "You heard me."

"Yeah I heard you, I'm just not sure I understood you.  Because from what I can gather from rumors and hearsay and counting black haired babies that have suspiciously light haired parents, there's been a _lot_ of drinking going on around here."

There was a deep breath as he looked up at the ceiling and then back at me, and I knew he was reining himself in from saying something scathing.

"These people take care of me, Molly.  I have to take care of them back."

"What, and that means getting half their women pregnant and then _not doing daddy?"_

He shook his head, like there was something obvious here that I wasn't getting and he was beginning to question my intelligence.  I really wanted to understand, but it just wasn't coming clear for me.

"There has to be a McClary bloodline, Mol.  If there's ever not a McClary in Claighe the whole thing defaults to a govenance."

"Which means what?"

"Which means if I'm gone and leave no descendants, the village becomes the property of the government and everyone loses their land, their homes, their businesses.  Everything."  I watched him fiddle with the pendant for a moment, then he dropped it against his chest and looked straight at me with a face that was, oddly, both stern and pleading.  "I'm not going to marry, Molly.  I'm not going to raise a family.  So what happens to these people when I die?"

I had no idea what to say.  Taking his responsibility to the people of the village this seriously wasn't something I would have ever expected from him and the fact that he _was_ took me completely off guard.  After a few seconds I had to stop looking at him.

"The women - do they know?"

"Of course they know, why do you think they do it?  They're looking out for themselves, their families.  If they've got a baby with McClary blood then they're guaranteed to always have their homes.  Do you really think their husbands would let them go up the hill just to fuck me?"

"I...sort of...yeah."

He snorted, a derisive noise that made it clear his next words weren't going to be flattering.

"Stupid woman.  I've got to make sure there's a provable blood relation here after I'm gone.  Right now there are three.  If there end up being more, so be it, the village is that much safer."

_Three.  My god he's got three children._

"The woman that came to the cabin?"

"Fionna."

"Her baby is yours?"

"Yes."

"Why did she come to see you if she's already done her duty?"

"When the babes are a certain age the blood father has to sign a document claiming them, otherwise they legally default to the last name of their mother's husband.  She was bringing me the papers."

It took all of about five seconds for me to feel my face going hot, remembering how he had sat there smirking at me while I yanked my clothes on with my pride stinging and my feelings hurt.  The cruel asshole had _known_ why she was there and he had let me go, uncaring and unconcerned.  My temper came up, followed by the volume of my voice, and he flinched when I turned it loose on him.

"Why didn't you say so instead of letting me stomp out of there like that?  You might never have seen me again!"

"I'd have seen you again, Molly."

"Oh?  What if I'd gotten that call three days ago, huh?  I would have been long gone before you came down to get drunk."

"Molly, shhhh, come here."

"No, you're not going to shush me or distract me, I want to know - "

"What do you want me to say, woman?"  There was a no nonsense tone in his voice that made me shut my mouth quicker than I intended.  "That I'm sorry?  That it was a shite thing to do and I have no excuse, it's just how I am?  Because something tells me you're not going to accept that and I don't have anything else to say."

I heard a growl coming up into my throat and realized I was angry now - truly, genuinely pissed off, not just irritated or annoyed but _mad._ I wanted to march across the room and slap the shit out of that pretty face of his, but I knew he enjoyed that sort of thing and that it wouldn't faze him in the least.  And then there was the other part of me that was screaming _just fuck him, say your goodbyes and get gone from him..._

It was nearly impossible to reconcile the two without regretting all of it.  So I stood my ground, the battlefield I'd chosen, by the bathroom door...but the fight was going out of me quickly after the initial rush of rage and something about him having claimed the rest of the room as his own personal battleground gave me a distinct sensation of early defeat.  My voice had quieted considerably when I finally spoke again.

"Is King really your name?"

He had been staring at his hands and looked up, one eyebrow raised in confusion.

"What?"

"Your name.  Is it really King."

The confused look turned just the slightest bit amused at my sudden change of direction and he leaned back on the bed, tucking his hands behind his head.  It was a psychological mockery, whether he realized it or not - it was the same posture he'd assumed as he'd watched me stomp out of the cabin and it instantly set my defenses up.

"Naw, my name is Thomas."

_There has always been a descendant of Thomas McClary on the slaibh._

"Huh.  Like on the marker."  I watched warily as he patted the bed next to him.

"What marker?"

"You really don't know anything beyond what goes on on that mountain, do you?"

"Why would I want to?"  He grinned, patting the mattress again.  "Come here Molly."

I knew I shouldn't.  I knew I should pick his kilt and jacket up off the bathroom floor and throw them at him and tell him to get his smug naked royal ass out of my room and out of my life, but his eyes were taking a lazy stroll down my body and I realized that I'd lost my shirt in our earlier tussle against the doorway.  And god help me, the lingering way he was staring at my bra was making my stomach go all funny.

"You are really a frustrating man, you know that?"

He nodded, and as I crossed the battlefield to defect to his side, he opened his arms and let me crawl inside them.

 

 

I expected him to be rough with me, to keep it cool and distant and strictly on a mutual gratification level, but the moment I sat down on the bed next to him he put his warm hands on my shoulders and slipped my straps down.  I started to shrug out of them, but he stopped me, sliding his fingers under the lacy cups to pull them down just enough to expose my nipples.  His mouth went instantly to one, sucking it, teasing with his tongue until I groaned and reached for him to bring him closer.

He didn't resist when I pulled his head against my chest.

And as he laid me down on the big soft bed with the plush soft blankets under us, I heard him talking to me again, in that odd rough language that whispered so smoothly off his tongue.  But this time it was only for a minute, and when the final words ghosted over my skin I stopped wondering _what_ he was saying and started wondering _why_ he was saying it.  His eyes were closed and his hands were moving over me, and for one insane moment it entered my mind that this big gruff man was praying to me.  But as he reached down between us and laid his palm flat against my underside while he moved his body over mine, I knew it didn't matter what the words were or what they meant.  Whatever he was asking for with those whispered supplications, I would give it to him.

 

When he pushed into me, I sucked in my breath and groaned;  it didn't hurt, necessarily, but he was so big and thick that he stretched me every time, regardless of how ready I was for him.  And I was definitely ready.  He had licked and sucked and bit me until I was wet and soft and aching for him, his hands tugging impatiently at my jeans until he'd finally sat up and yanked them off me, leaving my panties on so he could rub himself against the lace...the tiny satin bow on the front had made him grin, his fingers tracing almost lovingly over it before he had lowered himself onto me again and laid his heavy cock on it.  His first few thrusts were against my stomach, and I knew the lace and that little bow rubbing against the underside of his shaft were what made his eyes drift shut in ecstasy.

But once he'd pulled them down just far enough to slide himself into me, the loud moan that followed was more than the result of a panty kink.  I felt his whole body tremble for a second and thought he was already about to come, but he pulled his head up from where he'd been sucking at my shoulder and I could see his self control slip back into place.  Reaching up to push my hands through his still-damp hair, I stared at his closed eyes until he opened them and looked at me.

He held eye contact with me as he drew himself out and pushed in again, slowly, not stopping until we could feel our pelvic bones grinding against each other's.

"You're leaving," he said quietly.

I nodded, holding the contact between our gazes, knowing he would break it soon.  He never held eye contact for long, but now as I watched the softness creep slowly into his stare, I realized for the first time that it wasn't an establishment of dominance thing, always being the first to look away.  It was a protection.  He couldn't keep his feelings from showing in the big soft green of his irises, the best he could do was stop you from seeing it.

He blinked, and I spread my hands on both sides of his face to keep him from turning away.

"Yes."

The strength in his stare wavered and I knew he needed to look elsewhere, but I didn't let him.  He was inside me, by god he could look at me.  I stroked his cheeks with my thumbs and held that gaze, knowing it would likely be the last time we ever looked at each other this way.

"I don't need people, Molly," he finally said, so quietly that I barely even heard him, just inches away from his mouth.  "I find most of them useless."  There was a long pause where his gaze fell to my face, away from my eyes, but I kept my grip on his head and he made no move to separate himself from me.

It seemed like forever, but he finally brought his eyes back to mine and I caught a glimpse, just a fleeting one, of something that I could only describe as tenderness.

"But I feel like I could find a use for you."

 

 

_To be continued..._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glorious artwork by @vivianstark! Thank you for all the wonderful artistic motivation!


	16. Chapter 16

 

 

 

  **Saoilidh an duin’ air mhisg gum bi a h-uile duin’ air mhisg ach e fhèin.**  
The drunk man thinks himself the only one sober.

 

 

I wanted to kiss him.  I wanted to press my lips to his worse than I wanted to breathe or for my heart to keep beating.  But I couldn't do that to him - it was more than he could give me, something in him couldn't handle it, and I knew if I did it he would leave and my last memory of him would be his inability to accept such a simple intimacy.  I would be hurt and heartbroken and he would be...well, to be honest I wasn't sure what he would be.  Angry?  Scared?  Traumatized, repulsed?  I had no idea, but regardless of his reasons and potential reactions, it angered me deep down, his unwillingness to give me this one thing I so obviously wanted.  Or _was_ it obvious?  There seemed to be so many things he didn't understand, couldn't comprehend, or just didn't care to figure out.  Was he at all empathetic to the longing I harbored for this one simple act?  He had physically pulled away from me when I'd kissed his shoulder, but yet he could make love to me like _this,_ like there was nothing else in the world but us and this moment and these gasping breaths and racing heartbeats.

And those words.

_I feel like I could find a use for you._

It was almost insulting in its simplicity, but so achingly heartfelt that it brought stinging tears to my eyes.  He measured everything's worth by its usefulness, I knew that, it had become obvious while I was stuck in his cabin and had nothing else to do but analyze his quirks and count orgasms.  There was no room in his life for things that served no purpose and he had no interest in anything that wasn't good for a specific use.  But somewhere in his head or his heart he'd decided I was worthwhile.

And then he had let me storm out in anger with a hurt pride and sore feelings, when a simple explanation would have kept me there.  He had let me go so easy.

It made about as much sense as everything else about him.

I reached down and grabbed the pendant; it was swinging between us, swaying in rhythm with our bodies pushing against each other, and when I gave it a tug King looked down at it.  He stopped thrusting and brought one hand up to grip the long chain, sliding it over my head so that it was around both our necks.

"Are we sharing a wish?" I asked in a whisper as he nuzzled his lips against the side of my face, slowly moving against me again.  He grunted a little in response, his beard both scratchy and soft on my cheek, and as I brought my knees up to rest my legs on the backs of his thighs, a simple truth pushed its way into my hazy thoughts.

I honestly didn't know what to think of him anymore.  I'd thought I had him somewhat figured out, but now...nothing about him fell into place like it had at the start, when he was just an arrogant jerk with no manners and more sense than breeding.  It had been easy back then, sorting him in my head, deciding how I felt about him and assuming there was nothing more to him than what met the eye.  But that was all out the window now, gone just as completely as my resolve to resist him.  Now there was no sense at all to _anything_ I knew of him - he was arrogant, yes, but I suspected it was to hide an underlying lack of self esteem.  Twice he'd implied heavily that he didn't think much of his own personal worth.  And the whole bloodline thing...he was of noble blood but the only importance he put on it was in the fact that he could take care of the villagers by passing it on.  It was confounding and it hurt my brain to dwell on it, especially when his legacy was written on an historical marker a hundred miles away, proving that he was, as his name indicated, a king.

But he was a definite throwback to the wild, untamed marauders that the previous owners of his title were famous for being.  I wondered if he knew about them or if his behavior was just inborn, something that he couldn't change if he tried.  His atrocious lack of manners, I knew, was a result of living rough and being alone for so long.  But he'd spent part of his childhood in Glasgow, he hadn't been raised in the wild - surely he'd been taught how to behave like a respectable human being?  He had no need for politeness or good graces, up there on the mountain with nobody but the sheep and a few cows and that big crazy horse of his to keep him company, so maybe he had just forgotten, lapsing into complacency and eventually forgetting entirely.  The animals certainly didn't care how he behaved.  I'd watched him running his flock and seen proof that you don't speak kindly to sheep to get them moving, you yell and be aggressive to get them to do what you want them to.  That was what he was used to, and it bled over into how he dealt with humans when he came down off the mountain.

All of that made something of a twisted sense to me, when it was boiled down to basic truths.  But that was where the symmetry of his behavior ended.

Because now I'd seen glimpses of other sides of him, undeveloped sides, facets of him that were rough and jagged and unpolished but definitely there.  He could speak kindly, even considerately, when he wanted to.  He could show concern and express worry.  His gruff nature could even give way to tenderness from time to time.  And when it did, it was almost convincing enough to make you believe he knew how to treat people right.

But then he would swing to the far side again, leaving you shocked and revolted and wondering what the hell just happened.

And then there were times like this, when he did something so childlike and pure that it tugged at your heart and left you staring into his face, realizing how sweet his smile was and wondering how you'd ever missed the fact that his eyes were extraordinarily soft.

That was where I was right at that moment, looking up at him, biting my lip because what he was doing to my body felt so damn good that I could barely see straight.  And he was talking again, lowering his head to my chest to rub his lips across my collarbone, whispering words that barely reached my ears over the pounding of my heart as the necklace's chain held us close to each other.  Was this his wish?  These words?  I couldn't understand them and in my frustration I wanted to demand that he speak english, but it edged into my mind that maybe certain words only had meaning to him when spoken in the language he descended from.  The language of the kings before him.  He spoke it so smoothly, like it was the tongue his thoughts formed themselves in, and in between his mind and his mouth they could find no suitable translation.

_He's out of his time.  He doesn't belong here, now.  He was born hundreds of years out of his element, he should be on the battlefield, fierce and wild and dangerous, creating legends to be etched on those markers.  He should have claimed this land, not inherited it._

But here he was, in a century he couldn't fit into, hiding his true nature up on that mountain where he didn't have to conform to anyone's standards of propriety.

And I knew - I knew that when this was over he would leave, and then in the morning I would leave too, and there would be no goodbyes.  Neither of us would look back.  I would get up and shower and wash him out of me and that would be it, the end of our little fling, and I would probably cry a little on the flight home, but mostly I would rub my eyes and try to keep them shut and not think about him, about the way his touch went from rough to gentle when he put his hands on me and the way his voice got deep and gravelly during those first heated moments of arousal.  I'd do my best to forget all that somewhere in the sky between Scotland and Philadelphia, and when the plane touched down and I was back where I belonged, I would let him go forever.

 

That's what I told myself, anyway, laying there underneath him, pushing up against him like my life depended on drawing the breath from his lungs into my own through this desperate contact.  His hands were all over me like his fingertips were committing the feel of me to memory, knowing they would never touch me again.  It was as if he couldn't accept the possibility of any single touch being the last, and so he kept pushing himself against me, his skin rubbing desperately on mine, drawing me into himself even as he filled my body with his.

We were nothing alike and had no business being anywhere near each other's worlds, but god help me this felt _so fucking right._ And as I pushed him over onto his back and sat up on him, taking him so deep into me that my breath caught in my throat with a strangled gasp, he just laid there looking up at me with the clearest, purest look in his eyes, his hands moving over me in a way that brought just one word to my feverish head.

Reverent.

_His whispers were wishes, his words were prayers._

"Do you believe in god, Thomas?"

It was the first time I'd used his real name and it felt odd to my tongue, even odder to my ears.  His eyes fell to my stomach as his fingers slipped down between my legs and began rubbing at me, moving back to nudge gently into me before sliding forward to caress that aching little spot that so desperately needed his attention.

"I'm Celt.  We're heathens."

I bit my lip, thrusting forward on him, forcing his fingers to rub harder.  "But do you...?"

He sat up and suddenly bit me, hard, on the throat - hard enough to draw a yelp from me as he soothed the shocking pain with fingers that pushed deep into me at the same time.

"I believe in what my hands can touch and my mouth can taste."

"So...right now...I'm your deity."

_"Yes."_

I pushed his chest but he wouldn't be moved, dipping his head down to pull at my nipple with his lips.  He sucked roughly at it for a moment before letting it go to move to the other, sliding his tongue over the hardened tip, his heated breath on my bare skin stealing every bit of my resolve away.  I tangled my fingers in his unruly hair with the intent of forcing him to stop and look at me, but once he started sucking at my breast again, it was all I could do just to pull his head closer.

"Then I demand a sacrifice," I stammered, trying to keep the upper hand, yelping when his teeth nipped at me harder than was strictly necessary.

"I demand that you shut up."

Before I could form another word he pushed me back and rearranged us, settling between my raised knees and shoving his arms under my hips.  There was a breathless moment between the exhilaration of knowing what he was about to do and the exact heartbeat of time in which his mouth pressed to me, sucking at the spot he'd been rubbing with his remarkably adept fingers just seconds ago.  I couldn't stop a heavy moan as his tongue slid forcefully into me, his hands coming up to squeeze and rub my breasts, bringing me quickly to a new, far more intense arousal that was as shocking as it was delicious.  And as I writhed against his face with my legs over his shoulders, I knew, I _knew,_ that this was his act of worship.

 

My sexual experience up until King hadn't been all that varied or adventurous, and honestly I had no idea what I should be doing as he licked and sucked me to bliss...but I didn't have to feel uncomfortable in my inexperience for long, because as his warm soft tongue lapped hungrily at me, all coherent thought began to quickly lose its form until everything melted into a jumbled mess of feelings that had no words to describe them.  He'd done this to me once before, when he'd bathed me with the cloth in front of the fireplace, but he had stopped before I reached climax and finished me with penetration.   _This,_ though - this was something else entirely, and as I felt my back arching up off the bed and heard my cries interrupting the breathy moans that had preceded them, all I could do was put my hand over his to make him squeeze my breast harder and grab his hair with the other one, holding his head between my legs as I bucked my hips up uncontrollably against his face.  And through it all he held me down with his elbows on my hipbones, licking me until I came in a shuddering spasm of nearly unbearable pleasure.  It was jolting and intense and almost more than I could take, and when he finally pulled his head from between my legs and moved up to slide himself into me again, I grabbed onto him like I was drowning.

 

 

I thought he would leave when it was over, but he didn't.  He didn't get up to shower, he didn't roll over and immediately fall asleep.  I had been wishing he would, thinking it would make things easier if he was indifferent and distant, but he pushed me over onto my side with my back to him and nudged up against me, trapping me in his arms like he knew I wanted nothing more than to escape.  I tensed up, ready to start pulling away from him emotionally even if he wouldn't let me do it physically, and the first thing he did was push his face against the back of my neck and start whispering my name like he knew what I was doing.

_"Mol...shhhh, Molly..."_

"Don't."

I felt him bump his hips up against my butt and scoot closer, his arms tightening.  He wasn't about to obey me and he knew my strength of conviction was laughable.  All I could do was lay there with him spooned up behind me, wondering if I'd be able to slip out of his embrace without him noticing once he fell asleep.

I doubted it, but it was the only plan I had.

And as I drifted off to sleep to the sound of his breathing getting slower and deeper, I felt him rut up against me to get comfortable, his arms loosening as he relaxed.  But my idea of sneaking out of that oddly possessive hug was interrupted by the strange and unlikely sensation of his lips on the back of my neck.

Not just brushing against my skin.  Not the little licking and nibbling thing he always did.  His mouth pressed to the bump where my spine jutted out at the bottom of my neck and lingered there for a second, then pulled away just barely and moved slightly lower, doing it again.

"Did you just kiss me?"

He stirred a little, like he'd been on the delicate edge of sleep and I'd woken him.

"Hm...?"

"Did you kiss me?"

There was a pause, then a deep sigh as he settled again.

"Uh uh."

"Yes you did, I felt it."

"Nope."

I tried to turn to face him, but he tightened his arms again, holding me still.  There would be no more discussing it, I knew.  But I also knew what I'd felt.  That was a kiss, no matter how tiny and almost imperceptible it had been or how much he denied it, and as I settled back against him I realized I'd finally gotten what I wanted.  But it felt sad and final, and I almost wished it hadn't happened at all.

 

 

I don't know what time it was when I finally felt him let go of me and slip quietly out of the bed.  I didn't watch him as he crossed the room to retrieve his clothes from the bathroom floor, kept my eyes closed as he dressed in the dark and got his car keys from the dresser.  I knew he was sober enough to drive himself home so I didn't try to stop him.  I didn't want to say goodbye.

Apparently he didn't either, because the only thing I heard was the door closing behind him.

 

It only took me a few seconds to realize this _wasn't_ what I wanted, _at all._  And as I frantically yanked on my pants and ran out the door tugging my sweater on over my head, all I could do was hope he wasn't already gone - because the last thing I wanted to do was chase him all the way up that damn hill in the middle of the night.

But I knew I would if I had to.

 

"King!"

He stopped, bringing his hand down from the book shelf above the front door, and I could see he had Glenda's spare key clutched in his fingers.  He turned and looked at me and I could tell by the expression on his face that he hadn't expected me to follow him down.  I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and stood there staring at him, realizing suddenly that I had no idea what I wanted to say to him.

"You alright?"

"Yeah."  I nodded quickly, ridiculously embarrassed.  "I...I wanted to make sure you didn't kick out the window.  Glenda told me not to let you."

He didn't respond and his expression didn't change.  He seemed a little bit confused.

"I know where the key is."  He held it up for a second, but made no move to unlock the door.  I nodded again.  It seemed to be all I was capable of at the moment.

"I...I'm...I wanted to tell you...goodbye."

Something flinched in his face, just the slightest twitch of an eyebrow.  But he didn't say anything, and as I felt the hot, painful, choking lump coming up in my throat, I turned away and started back up the stairs.

"Molly - "

_Don't stop.  Don't turn around.  Whatever you do, don't look at him._

I kept going, and in a quiet voice I heard him say, "Have a safe trip home."

 

 

 

_To be continued..._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Art credit to VivianStark (@vivianstark at tumblr) for yet another beautiful image of King made exclusively for this story - please don't repost anywhere without credit to the artist and a link back to this fic*


	17. Chapter 17

 

 

 

 **Bidh cron duine cho mòr ri beinn mun lèir dha fhèin e.**  
A man’s fault will be as big as a mountain before he sees it.

 

 

I didn't sleep the rest of the night, what there was left of it.  It was just a couple of hours before morning broke, and as soon as it did I started making my travel arrangements - a flight home, late that afternoon.  An oddly detached sense of relief came over me as soon as I had my confirmation email and sat staring at it like a magical talisman that was going to take me back to where I belonged.  I was still dressed from my run downstairs the night before and headed down again to print out my boarding passes in Glenda's office, trying to avoid her questioning stare as I trudged past her shaking my head to warn off any conversation.  But she followed me anyway, pointing toward the desk where a book was sitting on the chair.

"King left that on the bar for you, I guess he came back."

"How do you know it's from him?"

"Who else around here reads that classic shite?"

I shrugged.  "Dave MacDale?"

"Doubtful."

I turned my back to her, pretending to be interested in watching the buttons on the old Xerox light up one at a time as it fired up.  "How did he get back in?"

"The rotter stole my spare key."

"Oh...well, at least he didn't kick out the window."  I picked up the book and stared at it.   _Wuthering Heights,_ the one he'd been reading when I first met him.  Judging by the condition of the cover and the ratty edges of the pages, it wasn't the first time he'd read it.  "He really needs some new books."

"I'll tell James at the booksellers."  There was something of a suggestive sneer as she came around to lean against the printer.  "Did he have 50 Shades up there?"

"No, but he had Story of O."

"Oh my god!"  She watched me print out my passes, reaching out to pull me into a hug once I finally turned back around.  "I'm going to miss you, city girl.  And I dare say he will too."

"Naw...the monarch of sheepshit hill's got more important things to think about than me."  There was a heavy lump coming up in my throat again and I felt slightly angry... _I should be pissing myself with excitement at the prospect of finally getting out of this place._ _So why do I feel like I'm going to break out wailing any second now?  That asshole, he took away my good feelings about going home._

"Well, anyway," I sniffled, holding the tattered book up.  "At least I've got something to read on the plane."

I was halfway up the stairs when Glenda's voice yelled up after me, stopping me mid-step and forcing me to make my decision final.

"Are you sure about this, Molly?"

My tongue felt glued to the top of my mouth and the words refused to form in my throat, but after an embarrassingly telling pause I finally managed to squeak out a reply.  It sounded weak and pitiful and not the least bit certain, but it was finally said...and once it hit my ears it was official and I knew I was going to stick to it.

"I'm sure." 

 

I packed my things, yanked the sheets with the evidence of what had transpired between King and I the previous night off the bed and tossed them into the bathtub, then got down on my hands and knees to check under the bed for anything I might be leaving behind.  A quick check of the drawers and another rifling of my suitcase confirmed what I'd suspected, and I stood in the middle of the room with my hands on my hips glaring angrily at someone who wasn't there, a wraith that had very possibly never really _been_ there despite my vivid memories of him.

"He stole my underwear _again,_ that son of a bitch."

But there was a very well read copy of Wuthering Heights sitting on the dresser, so I figured it must balance out somehow, somewhere in the universal scheme of things.  At least in his head.

 

 

I had just hefted my suitcase into the back of the rattly old truck that had hauled me up the mountain countless times - and that was now going to take me to the airport in its final task for this job - when the sound of my name spoken in an unmistakable deep brogue made me groan, clenching my eyes shut tight and repeating _no no no_ over and over under my breath.

_No, not now, not ever again.  Just no._

But despite everything in me screaming not to turn around, I couldn't stop myself.  I slammed the tailgate shut, took a deep breath, and looked behind me.

King was standing in front of the veterinarian's office two doors down.  His eyes were on me and he had just spoken my name, or maybe he had yelled it, I couldn't be sure over the deafening roar of my own blood rushing through my ears.  Perhaps he'd just whispered it and the wind had carried it to me.  Or maybe he hadn't spoken it at all, merely thought it, and through some odd trick of psychic cruelty I'd heard it inside his head.  I was beginning to doubt that I'd actually heard anything at all and was ready to just offer him a weak smile and a nod of my head before getting in the truck and driving off when I realized he hadn't moved, not an inch, since I'd turned around.  Despite the chilling cold he was just standing there, his coat open and the neck of his shirt unbuttoned, looking every bit like he was somehow impervious to the icy wind that was blowing his unruly black hair around his face.  And though I was freezing and on the verge of tears, I stood there staring back at him.

I should have seen the caveman that had thrown me headfirst into the snow multiple times for the simple sin of talking too much.  The uncultured sexist swine that had called me nasty names just to be mean and who had treated me like an idiot because I didn't know the basics of living off the grid.  The rude, mannerless cretin that had made me sleep on the floor and had pissed on my equipment while letting his animals trample my work site.  That's what I should have seen, standing there in the cold, making it clear with his icy stone glare that I was standing on his land and nothing I would ever do could ever even begin to win his approval.

But that wasn't what I saw.  What I saw was Thomas McClary, who had begrudgingly led me off the crest in the middle of a storm and shared his warm cabin and his food with me, and eventually his bed.  I saw a heart clutchingly handsome man who didn't even seem to know what he looked like and who wouldn't have cared if he did, because he was trapped inside that beautiful exterior with things that were less serene than what the rest of us could see.  A man confused by emotion and angered by sentiment, who could carry a tired lamb back to the pen inside his coat and lovingly caress a pair of stolen underwear despite not understanding his own reasons for doing either.  A lonely soul without a family who had been adopted by people he actively tried to stay away from, who went against his own social discomfort and dislike of human interaction to make sure their homes and livelihoods were safe.

A man whose hands were rough as sandpaper but still felt like silk when they touched me.

A man who flinched when I spoke, but shared his own language with me in whispered caresses.

The reality of the entire situation was that I was staring at the man I'd spent so much time in bed with, our hearts beating against each other's chests but carefully enshrouded in barbed wire and protected by complicated security systems neither of us knew the passwords to.  And that was the tragedy of us.  We'd shared our bodies and a few words but our feelings had stayed within the confines of our eyes, showing just enough each time our gazes met to let us know they were in there, churning around, unsure of how to express their presence.  And so we had left them there and restricted our interaction to a pure sort of physical communication that required nothing of us but motor skills and the ability to shove our inhibitions outside the creaky cabin door to wait for us to finish.

But we'd made a crucial mistake somewhere along the way.  We'd looked at each other, past the lustful stares and ecstasy fueled fluttering of eyelids that kept wanting to close rather than truly _see._ And that made me angry.  It made me sad and irritated but mostly it infuriated me, not because I felt I had lowered myself to the equivalent of a fuck-filled holiday in a foreign land with a sexy local that I would never have to look in the face again.  It made me mad because I knew _we could have been more than that._  Because I knew King was a fully formed person inside that granite shell, no matter how closed off and unwilling or incapable of interacting on a deeper level he might be.  Because I knew my own heart was capable of opening its arms to him and hugging him tight and helping him find the way out of his self imposed emotional seclusion...or of just closing its own eyes to his shortcomings and accepting him as he was.  I had seen what he struggled with and it made me want to shut my mouth and give him the silence he needed, anything to stop him from wincing at the sound of my voice.

I would have done that for him.  But we had simply run out of time, our impatience with each other's quirks filling too much space between us until the sand was all at the bottom of the hourglass.  We could have been a great love story, as sappy as that sounded, if we'd just been able to speak to each other.  But he hated words and I needed them too much, and so a door stayed closed between us, with me kicking angrily at it on one side and him leaning with his back against it on the other.

We were from different worlds, and that was where we belonged.  Different worlds.

 

But there he stood, just looking at me, the wind blowing his hair across his face and a fierce, almost angry hitch to his dark eyebrows as he glared across from his world into mine.  I was still technically standing on his ground, dirt that he owned simply by merit of who he was, but my things were in a suitcase in the back of a truck and I was all but gone.  He had no reign over me.

I turned my back to him and reached into my coat pocket for the keys, but the moment my fingers hit the cold metal they refused to go any further.  I heard a sort of gasping little sound of despair and knew it came from me, despite my resolve to walk away and be done.  It was a sound of complete uncertainty and I quickly looked back over at King, wondering if he'd heard it all the way over at the vet's office, the way I'd heard him say my name.  He was still standing there, unmoving, those big soft green eyes locked onto me like he couldn't look away.  And in that moment while I stood there biting my lip to stop it quivering, his hands came out of his pockets and hesitated for just a moment, caught somewhere between holding themselves out for me and dropping to his sides.

 

The last thing I wanted to do was run to him and hurl myself into his arms like some ridiculous romance novel heroine, kicking my feet up behind me as our lips met in a passionate kiss that set our souls afire.

Yeah, that was the absolute _very_ last thing I wanted to do.

But it was exactly what I did.

 

I was nearly to him when King strode across the space left between us and grabbed my face, his eyes burning into mine with something like a fierce rage that had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with setting something right in the universe.  And as I felt him lift me up as he stood back to full height with me clutching onto his neck like a drowning fool desperately grabbing onto whatever drifted into reach, I realized something that made my eyes fly open and a somewhat silly sound of shock burst out of my throat.

He was kissing me.

 

 

_To be continued..._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks again to VivianStark for the gorgeous artwork!


	18. Chapter 18

 

 

 

 **Ge milis am fìon, tha e searbh ri dhìol.**  
The wine is sweet, the paying bitter.

 

 

It wasn't my doing...my lips were there, yes, and I hadn't turned my face to the side when he had grabbed me up in his arms, but that was the extent of my participation in what was now taking place.  His lips were against mine, they were open and his tongue was somewhere in the equation, and it wasn't accidental.  Not even remotely.  This was intentional, and he wasn't pulling away from me, and he wasn't stopping.  My head cleared just enough to confirm that his tongue was in my mouth and our noses were smashed into each other, a bit painfully, but just that moment I couldn't have cared less.

_King was kissing me._

It was a crushing kiss, hard and brutal and desperate and literally everything I expected a kiss from the dark surly demon to be.  And if William Goldman was right, that there have been five perfect kisses since the invention of the kiss and Westley and Buttercup placed in at number one, then _this_ one - _this_ was a solid second.  I'm not sure if it qualified as pure, but it was definitely passionate, and by the time he set me back down on my feet I needed air and a place to sit and a very stiff drink, maybe an oxygen mask.  But he still had me firmly by the back of my neck and I was bent backward over his arm, effectively preventing me from having any real say in whether the kiss ended or not, and it only took a few brief seconds before I had my arms around his neck and a death grip on two handfuls of his hair.  I could taste blood and knew one or both of us had a split lip or had bitten our tongues, but I didn't care.   _This_ \- this was what I'd wanted for so long, what King had deprived me of from the very start, and now that he was giving it to me I knew I'd been right to want it.  I was right.   _It_ was right.  And it went on and on with his heart thumping soundly against me through both of our thick coats like there was nothing between us at all.

Nothing except one thing, something that was suddenly important.

I could feel the little round globe of the dandelion necklace around his neck hanging between us, digging into my chest.

_Oh my god, it worked._

 

 

It was beginning to rain when we finally separated, a soft, cold misty drizzle that felt like it would turn to frost any moment;  he was breathing hard, his eyes searching my face, brows furrowed like he was trying desperately to sort something that had him confounded.  His hands were on both sides of my neck and his grip was almost painful, his thumbs digging into my jaws, but I knew he didn't want me to look away.

And so I didn't.

And neither did he, until finally that soft, scared look in his eyes hardened into something slightly less distressed and he loosened his grip, lowering his head to rest his forehead against mine.

"Take care of yourself, Molly."

 

 

And that was it.  He let go of me, one big hand sliding slowly across my cheek as he moved away, his thumb brushing over my lips and his eyes never breaking their hold on mine until the tavern door slammed and we both glanced over at the couple that were rushing across the street to get out of the rain.  When I looked back at him again, his hands were shoved into his coat pockets, his eyes on my suitcase in the bed of the truck.  I thought for a moment that he was going to ask me if I needed someone to go with me, but that godawful lump was coming up in my throat again and I could feel my breath catching painfully; any more words between us and I was going to break down into a crying mess, and King would be mortified or angry or just have no clue what to do about it.

It was best for both of us for me to just go.  I'd gotten my kiss and he'd said goodbye.  Neither of us had any reason to lie to ourselves or to each other about what this was - a very bumpy fling, a short-term romance between two people who didn't belong anywhere near each other but who had found it in their hearts to tolerate one another for a little while.

I thought about that all the way to Glasgow. 

 

 

_"MOLLY THOMPKIN!"_

I had just come off the plane when I heard my name, which was something, seeing as the airport was ridiculously noisy...or maybe I had just gotten so used to the quiet of Claighe that now anything more than five voices in the tavern registered as too much.  I jumped and spun around, looking through the disembarking crowd for the voice calling my name, my eyes finally falling on a familiar dark head attached to a madly waving arm near the waiting area.  I waved back and sat my bag down, knowing I was about to be tackle hugged.  I'd called my cousin to meet me at the airport so we could visit for a few minutes during my short layover in London because being alone with my final memory of King was the very last thing I wanted to do.  She had relocated there for a job promotion and I hadn't seen her in ages.

"Hey, Kady."

She hugged me, kissed me, hugged me again - and somewhere in the middle of what was probably the third hug I felt myself choking up.  I didn't want her to see it so I extricated myself from her embrace and picked up my bag, cutting into her running commentary of the local weather to offer up a big fake smile and tell her I was hungry.  The food court and a catch-up chat while I waited for my connecting flight sounded like the best option for keeping my mind busy...or, at the very least, to give me something to hide behind.  I knew she would do most of the talking and for once I was grateful that she was a bigger chatterer than me.  I desperately needed words - and lots of them - to keep my mind off what I was leaving behind...but as we found a table and settled in, I caught myself choking back tears that I eventually couldn't hide anymore.

Kady, being Kady, didn't fail to notice.

And bless her, she did her best to cheer me up - but after a few sniveling minutes of self pity, I waved my hand to end the conversation about my failed romance in Scotland and took a deep breath.

"Tell me what's going on with you.  What's good in your life right now?"

She gave me a hesitant look, then pulled out her cellphone and scrolled through her pictures until she found one that brought an odd sort of satisfied smile to her face before handing it over to me.  It was a handsome older man with long black hair, a sweet smile, and a to-the-bone look of mischief in his big dark eyes.

"Who's he?"

"His name is Adam Heyworth, he's in San Diego.  Remember that guy I've had a crush on for the last decade or so?"  I nodded, remembering very well how many phone conversations I'd endured listening to her gush about some guy named Tom.  I handed the phone back.

"Yeah, I remember him."

"Plot twist.  That's his dad."

"Oh shit!"

Slapping a hand over my mouth to hide my outburst, I stared at her wide eyed as she laughed and put her phone away.  "Yeah, I wouldn't have expected it either.  We started talking after he accidentally switched phones with Tommy's wife and it just sort of...happened.  I'm going back in a couple of weeks to meet him."

"Tommy got married?"

"Yeah, they just had a kid."

"Wait - you're going back to San Diego?  What about your job here?"

"Oh fuck the job.  I found out my boss tried to assault Tommy's wife.  Anja's my best friend, I'm not going to keep working for the guy after that."

I sat there staring at her, sort of in shock.  This was a huge turn of events for her and I felt conflicted about how I should react.  She was obviously happy and for the first time in a lifetime of knowing her, she seemed oddly calm.  "Is it serious?  With Adam?"

She nodded, giving me a conspiratorial wink as the counter guy brought our food to the table.  "Yeah, it is."

 

 

We sat there chatting about anything and everything - with the careful and deliberate exception of the last few weeks of my life - until my flight was called.  She kissed and hugged me goodbye, I congratulated her and wished her luck, sincerely happy for her even though it made my heart hurt worse to know that my perpetually lovelorn cousin had hit the romance jackpot while I sat staring at a hand full of low cards.  Life had a funny way of teasing you with what you really wanted and then giving you something else entirely.  But I didn't really care anymore what it had in mind for me, at least I didn't while I trudged back through the crowded, noisy airport to my boarding gate...all I could think about was what had been dangled in front of my face and then snatched away before I could grab it and the tragic, irritating unfairness of it all.  King wasn't anywhere near what I'd always assumed to be a compatible mate, not even close, but the longer I was away from him the more I missed him - despite his meanness, despite his rough demeanor, maybe especially despite the way he lived.  I knew none of that was for me;  I had no desire to live in the wild and I certainly had no desire to spend the rest of my life with a man who couldn't stand the sound of my voice.

But something about him clutched viciously at my heart, and over the dull roar of the busy airport I could hear it beating in my ears.  

 _I wanted him._  But that didn't mean I could actually have him, or that I could ever presume to think I could keep him even if I did somehow manage to align our stars enough to prevent cosmic cataclysm every time we looked at each other.  It was completely unfair...but I had a promotion waiting for me at home, a job that I'd wanted badly for a very long time, and relatively speaking things weren't so bad.

Then why did I want to cry every time a couple walked past me holding hands?

Maybe because it brought back vivid memories of the one time he'd done it, lacing his fingers with mine as we lay in bed together, our hands resting on the pillow between our faces.  His palms and fingers were rough and calloused from a lifetime of hard outdoor work, and the startling incongruity of them sliding over soft, sensitive parts of my body had given me shivers that felt like delicate orgasms every time he touched me.  I caught myself staring at strangers' hands as I made my way to my gate to wait for boarding, searching for long, strong fingers like his, staring at peoples knuckles looking for scars.  And in all the noise and mayhem of travelers getting where they were going, I found a quiet place in my head where King was still kissing me, making it clear that whatever hangup he had about that particular act wasn't an insurmountable thing.  He'd overcome it and done it.  For me.

 _Why couldn't that have happened sooner?_ I knew it couldn't have been easy for him for whatever reason, but he'd done it.  Did that mean something?  Or had he simply felt bad about me leaving without the one thing he knew I wanted from him?  Even if that was the case, it was proof that he could feel empathy, that he cared about my feelings.  He wasn't devoid of emotions, regardless of how little he understood of them.  He'd cared enough to kiss me, and either way, it was a huge thing.  And all I could think of when I closed my eyes was how his lips had felt on mine, how that hard, stern, grim line that had smirked cruelly at me so many times was suddenly soft and yielding, how his warm tongue had touched mine and his big hands had come up to hold my face like he was afraid I would resist.

It had been a good kiss, by any standard.

And it was mine, given to me by the one and only person in the world I had ever actively wished to do it with. 

I thought about Kady and her new man, making it work even though they were thousands of miles apart.  They'd been together for months and were so excited about finally meeting...I'd never really thought a long distance relationship could work, but if Kady could do it -

_Oh stop._

King didn't have a phone, I doubted if he even really knew how to use one and I knew he wouldn't want to even if he did.  Because what were phones anyway?  A means by which to talk at someone.  He didn't like to talk and he didn't like people to talk to him.  A phone was about the _last_ thing he would ever want any part of.  No, I couldn't kid myself that we would keep in touch somehow.  That wasn't us.  We were who we were, and the fates had conspired to throw us together and then pull us apart, without allowing us a lifeline to connect our worlds.

 

 

I tilted my seat back and closed my eyes, listening to the droning hum of the plane's engines and the auditory mayhem of the other passengers talking, and wondered how King coped when he went to the city.  Noise had never bothered me, but now, thinking about him and his sensory issues, I started to notice how loud and intrusive everything was.  There were no pockets of quiet to hide in, just a neverending onslaught of sound.  It was starting to make me feel nervous, and I shook my head to bring myself out of the odd little bubble that was muffling it all to a disquieting throb in the back of my head.

_No wonder he's like a cat in a room full of firecrackers._

The pilot made his announcement, wished us all a comfortable trip, and as I was buckling my seatbelt I remembered the book.  It was in my carry on bag, shoved in at the last minute instead of packed into my suitcase, and as I pulled it out I felt a shiver run through me.  This tattered, beaten old copy of Wuthering Heights had been held by King's hands, and the picture on the cover was worn off where his fingers had gripped it so many times.  I knew he'd read it sitting in front of the fireplace in that worn old victorian chair of his...I could smell the smokey wood from the fire, settled deep into the pages.  There was a slight whiskey smell to it as well as some warped edges and I wondered if he'd fallen asleep reading one night, the tin cup in his hand tipping over as he dozed, wetting the pages with the Macallan I'd seen on his top shelf in that austere little kitchen.

I didn't realize I was clutching the book to my face until the stewardess asked me if I needed anything.

_Yeah, I need to go back.  I need off this plane._

"I'm fine, thanks."

She nodded, moving along.

And as I sat there sniffing that ratty old book and ignoring the sideways glances my business-suited row mate was casting in my direction, a torn bit of paper fell out of the book and fluttered to my lap.  I assumed it was a piece of the book itself;  the binding was loose, some pages tucked haphazardly back into place.  But when I picked it up and saw the messy, scrawled print in dark pencil, it took a few seconds for me to realize it was probably King's handwriting. 

_Tha mi gad ionndrainn-thà._

I had no idea what it meant, or if he had even written it to me.  It could have been his bookmark for all I knew, a notation to himself that this was where he'd stopped reading.  But it was all I had of him, really - it didn't matter what it said and I didn't really care if I never found out.  I was nervously touching it with trembling fingers when the man next to me cleared his throat.

"Are you from the US?"

I think I must have jumped a little, forgetting he was there until he spoke, lost in my little world with my little scrap of paper.  I nodded.

"Yeah, Pennsylvania.  I'm headed home."

He nodded and it occurred to me that he had a heavy accent, almost the same thick sort of brogue that King used.  I stared at him nervously for a second, still fidgeting with the paper.  "Do you - "

"I can tell you what it says."  There was a sympathetic expression on his face and it was clear he had me figured out.   _Going home and leaving someone behind._  I wondered how obvious it was as I tentatively handed him the paper, not really wanting to let go of it.

"Please?"

Setting his glasses far down on his nose, the man leaned toward me and looked at the paper for a second, not touching it, respecting what must have looked to him like a sacred talisman, the way I was handling it.  A very small smile pulled up the corners of his mouth and he took his glasses off again, settling back in his seat.

"It says _I miss you already."_

 

 

_To be continued..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Thanks to VivianStark for the beautiful artwork of King! (image of Molly via the web)


	19. Chapter 19

 

 

 

 **Ged bheir thu bean o Ifrinn, bheir i dhachaigh thu.**  
Though you should take a wife from Hell, yet she will bring you home.

 

 

 

"King, there's a package here for you."

The dark haired man looked up, confusion  furrowing his brow.  His sullen demeanor had kept anyone from speaking to him for weeks, and it was how he preferred it - ever since the city girl had left, he hadn't had much stomach or patience for the locals.  Assuming the barkeep had made a mistake, he ignored her, turning his attention back to his ale and his thoughts.

"King McClary, I'm talking to you!"

She was at his table now, one hand flat on it in front of him, fingers tapping impatiently.  Glennie, probably the closest thing he had to a friend, or at least the person who feared him the least in all of Claighe.  He looked up, his eyes shooting a warning that the woman soundly disregarded.  "There's a bundle for you, it arrived Wednesday.  If you'd get a phone up there in that hovel of yours maybe a soul could get hold of you every now and again."  She gave him an annoyed huff and strolled off back to the bar, ducking down behind it to retrieve a big box from underneath.  Slamming it down on the hardwood, she stood glaring at him with her hands on her hips.  "You gonna take it?  Because I'm chucking it out back if you don't, it's taking up space where the whiskey should be."

The man at the next table gave him a pleading look.  "I'd take it if I were you, we need all the whiskey space we can get."

Scrubbing his face hard with his hands, King stood slowly, moving to the bar to turn the box around so he could read the shipping label.

"It's from Philadelphia," the barkeep announced, as if he couldn't read it for himself.  He gave her a cold glare and tipped the box up - _Molly Thompkin, Philadelphia PA._

He tried hard to keep the smile off his face as he dropped some crumpled bills on the bar to pay for his ale and tucked the box under his arm, ignoring the mumbled "See ya King" as he left.

 

 

Placing the box securely in the passenger seat of his Jeep, he stretched the seatbelt across it and laughed when he realized what he was doing.  He didn't even wear a seatbelt himself.  Pulling his blade from his pocket and sliding it up under the packing tape, he sliced the top open and hesitated a moment, hands shaking, before opening it.

Books.  Molly had sent him books.  All new, with unbent covers and pristine pages, just waiting to be read.  He picked one up and pressed his nose to the cover, inhaling the woodsy scent of the paper;  he didn't realize his eyes were closed until he heard the puppy whining in the back seat and reached back to pet her.  A glimpse of red caught his eye and he took another book out of the box, his heart speeding up a little when he realized what was under it.

A pair of lacy panties.  Unlike the books, they weren't new, and his eyes drifted shut again as he brought them to his face to inhale her scent.

"Fuck, Molly.  Kill me why don't you."

He tucked them into the pocket of his coat and started the jeep, resting his forehead on the steering wheel for a moment to clear his cluttered mind of all the noise that was suddenly crashing about inside it.  Somewhere on the other side of the big blue sea was a woman with curly auburn hair and china blue eyes and a voice that he couldn't get out of his head, a woman that hadn't run away from him.  A woman that had tried hard to understand him, that hadn't taken his shit or let him intimidate her into scuttling off back down the hill at the first cold glare.  A woman that had left him, but only because her time with him was up, not because he'd chased her off.

He'd never failed to chase a woman off before.

It was a new feeling, an intriguing one.  He didn't understand it, but he knew one thing just as surely as he knew the ring on his finger meant his blood matched what had been spilled in the dirt of the Sliabh hundreds of years ago - he knew he'd see her again. _He'd see her again._  Once he'd said it to himself a few times, the noise in his head started to quieten, the rattly feeling in his nervous system calming till he could think clearly again.

Giving the anxious puppy in the back seat a sideways glare, he waited until it cowered before breaking into a grin and pushing the box into the floorboard.  "Come on up here then."  When the dog immediately obeyed, scrambling clumsily into the front passenger seat, he reached over and scratched its ears, smiling when he realized that interacting with the pup stilled the unease in his gut.  He gave her a rough tussle, scratching her little belly when she fell over onto her back.

"You're a good girl, Mol."

Fishing the little glass encased dandelion frond from inside the neck of his shirt, he pressed it to his lips for a moment before letting it drop.  There was an oddly soothing sort of silence now that surrounded her voice in his head, taking the edge off the discomfort it had caused him before.  It was a calming thing now, something he called up when he had to be around other people, when the discomfiting intrusion of too many words from too many mouths assaulted his nerves and brought a scowl to his face.  But these days the scowl was more to keep people from asking about her, to warn them off from trying to make him share her with them.  She was his, one of the few possessions he placed a value on.  He'd found a use for her.

She soothed him.

_I'll see her again._

The pup whined, sensing his shift in mood, fidgeting nervously in hopes of bringing back her master's approval.  He petted her till she settled, her nose catching the familiar scent in his pocket of another person, a person she knew, and King laughed softly as she tried to push her nose in to get it.

"No ye don't, that's for my nose, not yours."  Backing the jeep out onto the street, he smiled at the pup.  "Lets go home, sweetness."

 

 

 _To be continued..._  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to VivianStark for the artwork of King!


	20. Epilogue - Philadelphia

 

 

 

**Chan eil an doras dùinte a-riamh, ach dh'fhosgail eile.**

No door ever closed, but another opened. 

 

 

"No, I just got off work, I had to stay over and get some late paperwork finished."  Molly sat down next to the fountain to wait for the bus, tugging her coat a little more tightly around herself;  it was strictly a habit, something she did because she always had, not because the cold particularly bothered her.  After Scotland cold, nothing Philly had to offer was even worth her notice.  "Listen, I'm going to stay in tonight, maybe we can do a girls night or something next week.  I'm just sorta...I dunno."  She let her voice trail off and left the last word unsaid.

_Melancholy._

Yeah, that was definitely the word.  Ever since she'd gotten back there had been this nagging sense of sadness lurking in the far corner of her heart, casting a shadow over everything that should have made her smile.  She hated to say King had ruined her, but it was starting to feel disconcertingly like that was very much the case.  She missed him - the idea of him, tall and handsome and rugged, strong and capable, all big hands and soft eyes and naked as a fuck demon under his kilt - and the reality of him, silent and ill mannered and averse to both communication and interaction, with rough calloused fingers and a prickly demeanor to match his rude disposition.  It was all him, every alluring and infuriating bit of it.  And she'd accepted that none of it was ever going to change, not for her, not for anyone.

She was surprisingly okay with it, not that it mattered anymore.  He was three thousand miles away, no longer her problem...but the specter of him was still haunting her till she ached, the shadows above her bed at night taking on the shape of black sooty wings, the memory of his warm breath on her face waking her with a groan of miserable longing more often than she liked to admit.

_Dammit, King._

She turned her phone over;  taped to the inside of the case was the little note that had fallen out of the book he'd given her, its Gaelic words scribbled in messy dark handwriting that she still assumed was his.  A love letter of sorts, written by the last of the Celtic kings.

_Tha mi gad ionndrainn-thà._

It seemed unlikely, whenever she thought of it.  Was he actually capable of missing her?  Or was the note just something the previous owner of the book had left behind?  The bookseller in the village was in the habit of giving King old books, Glenda had told her...how many hands had that particular book passed through before coming into his?  But she couldn't imagine him leaving something like that in a book that he'd read and finished...it would have fallen into his lap much the same way it had fallen into hers, and he would have glanced at it and tossed it promptly into the fireplace.  Other people's sentimentality meant nothing to him - he would have considered it an intrusion into a stranger's privacy, the last thing he would have done would be to tuck it back inside the book.  It wouldn't have been there to fall, fluttering like a whispered elegy in the wind, softly onto her lap.  He _had_ to have written it himself.

Out of her periphery she saw a tall man standing nearby and her internal warning system pulled her out of her thoughts, alerting her to the fact that he was looking at her.  She quickly turned her back to him and broke into her co-worker's running commentary on the decline of working conditions on the third floor since her promotion.  The promotion she'd won by irritating the hell out of a man on a mountain with a lot of sheep and a very short temper.  "My bus is about to be here, I'll call you later, okay?  I'm going to do my paperwork and get some Chinese and watch Netflix, probably call it an early night."

The man was still standing there when she hung up, but he was a bit far away and she didn't want to look directly at him - Philadelphia was the city of brotherly love, after all, and some guys tried to take that overly hopeful platitude a little too far in her experience.  Besides, at first glance he had looked shockingly like someone she knew.  Someone she _used_ to know...

Someone he couldn't possibly be.

It had been three months since she'd left Scotland.  Three months since she'd left  _him._  Three months since she'd told her heart it would be okay, even though she knew it was going to take a lot longer for that promise to work itself out.  She glanced over at the man again, squinting, the sun behind him obscuring his face.

"King...?"

He turned his head just enough to block the sun and Molly blinked hard, laughing a little at herself for saying his name out loud.  The man was the right height, had the right color hair, the right build and body type...but he was wearing jeans and a coat and his long hair was pulled back, a shaggy black beard covering the lower half of his face.  The resemblance was just enough to be startling and she turned away, shaking her head.

Couldn't be.

There was a long moment of quiet, an odd bubble of silence that dulled the roar of the city down to a soft whisper as she closed her eyes and listened...it was something she'd been doing ever since she'd stepped off the plane and it had become something of a habit, a trick to soften the edges of the noisy world around her, a world she'd never been bothered by until now.  Now, since the cranky Scot had forced her to think about it, about how loud things were and how comforting and safe silence could be.  Curiosity had made her seek out this quiet little side world where King seemed to live, where a peaceful look of contentment softened that hard line between his eyebrows and made him seem as if he was existing, alone, in his own serene universe - she found herself taking time more and more often to close her eyes and shut it all out, seeking out those quiet places, soothed by the calming lull of the absence of chaos.  

She could see him clearly now every time she closed her eyes, each time she tiptoed into one of the shushed spaces that she hadn't known were there.  Spaces she found herself making excuses to visit now.  Spaces where he could be found, silently going about his business while she watched, wisdom and compassion finally teaching her to leave him be, to hold her words until he was ready for them.  But then the noise would intrude again, and he would vanish as if he could only exist in the absence of it.  Each time he left it was a replay of their final goodbye, another fresh stab in the heart.

A bus roared past, the bus she'd been waiting for and had now somehow managed to miss in her state of disconnect, its noisy hydraulics slamming their way forcibly into her consciousness; as she watched it rumble by she felt her brow furrowing the same way King's always had when she spoke.  Was this what it had been like for him, having to listen to her unwelcome yammering and having no way to get away from it?  Like the ruthless scream of traffic with a background of neverending crowded streets, a million nondescript voices speaking at once with not a single word of it being anything you wanted to hear?  She suddenly wanted to cry, desperate to get away from it all.

_God, I'm so sorry..._

She closed her eyes hard, trying to find her way back to the silence again - but the quiet place was gone now, chased away, and she knew he was gone now too.

But this time when she opened her eyes, his face was still there, smiling at her.  Without thinking, she reached out and touched him, the scratchy dark beard strangely ticklish against her fingers.

"King?"

Her eyes fell to the open front of his coat, to the little glass globe hanging there from the long chain around his neck.

_Does it have any wishes left in it?_

A little gasp caught in her throat as she slapped her hands over her mouth, but he took her by the wrists and pulled them away from her face.  Lowering his head to hers, he brushed her lips gently with his, whispering softly against her mouth.

"Aye, Mol."

 

 

~The End~

 

**_~[Molly and King will return in Sàmhach Mhiannan](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9221345) ~_ **

 

 

 


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